<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />On Further Consideration&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> OK, even a hardened cynic ought to be impressed with this&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6afqVLntBmxiQQALkXd0eB/85c4c6fb2ad9f1bfdd17fdd342a10c25/elon-tweet.png" alt="elon tweet" width="540px" />
Yesterday SpaceX conducted a successful fifth test flight of its Starship at Boca Chica, Texas &mdash; and an engineering first.
&ldquo;Rather than have the booster land in the ocean, as is typical,&rdquo; reports the BBC, &ldquo;SpaceX managed to slow it from speeds in excess of 17,000 mph (27,350 km/h), guide it gently back to the launchpad and catch it in a pair of giant mechanical arms.&rdquo;
Yes, a reusable booster. That&rsquo;s a major cost savings when it comes to space exploration.
For SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the booster capture was a welcome opportunity to change the subject from the indifferent if not hostile reaction he got to his Cybercab event Thursday night.
The media was unimpressed &mdash; &ldquo;heavy on showbiz but light on business&rdquo; said The Wall Street Journal &mdash; and shares of Tesla took an 8.8% spill the next day.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But was the Cybercab event really the dud the corporate media made it out to be?
During the 2010s, Musk would frequently put on events with far less substance &mdash; and the media oohed and aahed.
But that was before Musk&rsquo;s falling-out with the rest of the power elite. From the moment in May 2020 that he kept Tesla&rsquo;s factory in Fremont, California open in defiance of Alameda County&rsquo;s lockdown orders&hellip; nearly every new Musk reveal has gotten the media&rsquo;s side-eye.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;The We, Robot event wasn't just about unveiling new products,&rdquo; ventures Paradigm&rsquo;s tech-investing authority Ray Blanco.
Musk, says Ray, &ldquo;also painted a picture of a world transformed by autonomous technology.
&ldquo;Musk&rsquo;s vision is for a world so exciting that he wishes he could be there now. He spoke of turning parking lots into parks, of creating space in our cities. He painted a picture of an age of abundance, where AI leads to plummeting costs for products and services.
&ldquo;It's a future where the pain of transport &mdash; the hours lost to traffic, the frustration of rush hour &mdash; becomes a thing of the past.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;At the heart of this revolution is the Cybercab, a vehicle that embodies the essence of autonomous transport,&rdquo; Ray goes on.
&ldquo;With no steering wheel or pedals, it's a bold statement about the future of mobility.&rdquo;

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7JHjs2nrBNh24hj1EUOpE9/214ac12f88ac7ef474f3c104141bb18e/Cybercab.png" alt="cybercab" width="540px" />

The Cybercab brings new meaning to &ldquo;Look Ma, no hands!&rdquo; [Tesla photo]
&ldquo;Musk also expects it to cost under $30,000,&rdquo; Ray adds.
&ldquo;But he isn't content to wait until 2026 when the Cybercab is slated for production. He's pushing for unsupervised self-driving in Tesla's Model 3 and Y as early as next year in Texas and California.
&ldquo;It's an ambitious timeline, but one that speaks to the rapid pace of innovation in this space.&rdquo;
And it wasn&rsquo;t just the cybercab: There was also a Robovan, an autonomous vehicle carrying up to 20 people at a time&hellip; and a humanoid robot called Optimus. Costing as little as $20,000, Musk intends for Optimus to become as common as iPhones.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Yes, there will be obstacles along the way: &ldquo;Achieving unsupervised self-driving by next year is an ambitious goal that may face regulatory scrutiny,&rdquo; Ray allows. &ldquo;Competition in the autonomous vehicle and AI chip space is fierce.
&ldquo;Plus, Tesla's history of ambitious timelines suggests that some features may take longer to materialize than stated, something Musk hinted at himself during his presentation.
&ldquo;But I have little doubt about the direction we&rsquo;re heading in. AI is the future of transportation and beyond.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Rocket Launches and Social Media Posts
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Speaking of Musk and his continued falling-out with the power elite&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1O7twtq8ii3i2fHwrToQ3B/aaf0ab7824c56f47e30c7fdaede518d1/LA-Times.png" alt="LA Times" width="540px" />
&ldquo;SpaceX&rsquo;s plans to launch more rockets from the California coast were rejected by a state commission,&rdquo; reports the Los Angeles Times &mdash; &ldquo;with some officials citing Elon Musk&rsquo;s political posts on X and raising concerns about the billionaire&rsquo;s labor record at his companies.
&ldquo;The plan to increase the number of rocket blasts into space up to 50 a year was rejected by the California Coastal Commission on Thursday despite assurances from Space Force and Air Force officials that they would increase efforts to monitor the effects that rocket launches have on nearby wildlife.&rdquo;
As the name implies, the California Coastal Commission&rsquo;s remit has to do with the environmental impact of business activity. It has nothing to do with the social media posts of business owners.
The good folks at FIRE &mdash; the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression &mdash; have risen to Musk&rsquo;s defense: &ldquo;The First Amendment forbids government agencies from leveraging regulatory power to stifle protected speech,&rdquo; FIRE says in a post on X.
&ldquo;That was true when Florida&rsquo;s government punished Disney for opposing Gov. Ron DeSantis&rsquo;s education policies, it was true when a New York agency leaned on insurance companies to cut ties with the NRA because of its political advocacy and it&rsquo;s true here.
&ldquo;No matter the politics at issue, regulatory oversight isn&rsquo;t a blank check for censorship.&rdquo;
God bless the people at FIRE. They&rsquo;re among the very few left who put principle above politics.
In the meantime, look for SpaceX to carry out a lot more of its launches from Texas &mdash; like the one yesterday.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />U.S. Troops as a Trip Wire
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Oil begins a new week down nearly 2%: For the moment, Mr. Market&rsquo;s attitude toward the Middle East is Wake me up when something happens.
Yesterday the Pentagon announced it will deploy a THAAD anti-missile battery to Israel &mdash; the acronym standing for &ldquo;Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense.&rdquo; CNN reports that about 100 U.S. troops will be deployed to operate the system.
The decision comes as Washington and Tel Aviv continue to coordinate plans for an Israeli attack on Iran.
On the surface, it&rsquo;s a baffling decision: &ldquo;What would be the purpose of US personnel operating an extremely expensive system which Israel already possesses, and which Iran apparently foiled in its latest retaliatory attack?&rdquo; tweets the independent journalist Max Blumenthal.
&ldquo;It seems the Biden admin is on the verge of turning U.S. troops into human shields for Israel, exploiting their presence to prevent Iran from striking near their strategically significant locations, as it seeks to limit direct U.S. involvement in the conflict.
&ldquo;American soldiers therefore become human trip wires as well, as any U.S. casualties would trigger calls in Washington for an all-out U.S. war on Iran. And that is precisely what [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has been angling for since he returned to the PM&rsquo;s office 15 years ago.&rdquo;
Or are U.S. casualties the aim for Washington as well?
Says Daniel McAdams at the Ron Paul Institute: &ldquo;It appears certain that President Biden and his neocon-dominated foreign policy team are setting up U.S. military members to be killed in Israel to manufacture consent for a full-on U.S. war against all of Israel's enemies in the region.&rdquo;
But none of that is priced into a barrel of West Texas intermediate this morning &mdash; down $1.69 to $73.87.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Economic Numbers: Just So Much Background Noise
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />For the next few months, major economic numbers like inflation and unemployment will matter less to the stock market than before.
That&rsquo;s the assessment of Enrique Abeyta &mdash; former hedge fund bigwig and the newest member of the Paradigm team.
&ldquo;For the last two or three years,&rdquo; Enrique writes in our new Truth &amp; Trends e-letter, &ldquo;macroeconomic data has driven volatility and the direction of the stock market overall.&rdquo;
But a funny thing happened last Thursday with a &ldquo;hotter than expected&rdquo; inflation number. &ldquo;The S&amp;P 500 fell 0.21% while the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.05%.
&ldquo;There may have been a few market-moving reports in the last six months, but the price volatility of the stock market around these reports has been dying down this year.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Here&rsquo;s the thing: &ldquo;This is completely normal,&rdquo; says Enrique.
&ldquo;The stock market and economy go through periods where macroeconomic data plays a major role in the outcome. This is the exception, though, and not the rule.&rdquo;
The bulk of the time, Enrique says what matters is good ol&rsquo; prices and earnings.
One of his favorite sayings is that PRICE = TRUTH. &ldquo;There are well-defined technical setups that can make you money with in any type of market,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;When the market isn&rsquo;t being thrown around by macroeconomic data, then they work even better. I believe we&rsquo;re entering that kind of bull market/melt-up period right now.&rdquo;
As for earnings, we&rsquo;re entering earnings season right now: &ldquo;If companies continue to increase earnings, beat expectations and raise estimates, then the stock market will go higher.
Maybe by a lot, or maybe only a little. Maybe now, or maybe later. But if earnings go up, the market will go higher.&rdquo;
Enrique&rsquo;s conclusion: &ldquo;If we are entering a period when macroeconomic data is less important, then it will also be good for fundamental strategies based on earnings.
&ldquo;You can focus on finding companies growing and beating numbers. And stop worrying about a 0.01% &lsquo;miss&rsquo; on an inflation or GDP number.&rdquo;
Not that we&rsquo;ll ignore the numbers in this space. Just know that going forward they&rsquo;ll matter less to the market&rsquo;s day-to-day action&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />As for today&rsquo;s action, it&rsquo;s all green for the major U.S. indexes. The Dow and S&amp;P 500 are powering still higher into record territory&hellip; while at 18,480 the Nasdaq is less than 1% away from reclaiming its July 10 record close.
Precious metals are losing ground &mdash; but gold is still well above $2,600 and silver&rsquo;s holding the line on $31. Bitcoin is about to break through the $66,000 barrier for the first time this month.
Yes, the markets are open on Columbus Day. This is one of only two days a year that the stock market is open while many banks and all post offices are closed. The other is Veterans Day next month.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Breaking up Is Hard to Do, AI Edition
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The future of breakups is here and it looks like this&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/UlPMeXSdNWNUWatLf8Yt7/43d69781bf189e730741e49d0afb8aae/MB.png" alt="MB" width="540px" />
That&rsquo;s an AI-generated summary of text messages sent last week by the girlfriend &mdash; well, ex-girlfriend &mdash; of a New York-based software developer named Nick Spreen.
Spreen has been running a beta version of iOS on his iPhone in recent weeks &mdash; featuring a souped-up version of Apple Intelligence that will soon be part of iOS 18.1. (For us non-beta testers, the current version is 18.0.1.)
In the new release, the AI assistant will helpfully summarize a string of texts for you &mdash; even if the texts have to do with something as sensitive as breaking off a relationship.
Spreen posted the screengrab on his X account. Asked if it was real, he confirmed it was. And it happened on his birthday, no less.
"I do feel like it added a level of distance to it that wasn&rsquo;t a bad thing," Spreen says in an interview with Ars Technica. "Maybe a bit like a personal assistant who stays professional and has your back even in the most awful situations.&rdquo;
Then he added: &ldquo;But yeah, more than anything it felt unreal and dystopian."
Ars Technica writer Benj Edwards speculates the day might come when you can ask an AI to compose a series of breakup texts on your behalf. (Sounds plausible if AI can already generate term papers, right?)
And then&hellip; the recipient can get an AI summary of your AI-generated breakup texts.
And it&rsquo;s at that point your editor fully embraces the late Douglas Adams&rsquo; description of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/starting-an-ai-company-from-scratch">how those of us over age 35 approach technology&hellip;</a>
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

shutterstock 585342653

5-bullet-placeholder

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

OK, even a hardened cynic ought to be impressed with this…

SpaceX’s Excellent Timing 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Uncle Sam&rsquo;s Unprecedented Budget Gap
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> For the record: Uncle Sam just racked up an annual budget deficit of $1.8 trillion.
As the week winds down, we have several loose ends to wrap up &mdash; none more important to your financial future than this one.
For the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, the government spent $6.75 trillion &mdash; while collecting only $4.92 trillion in revenue. That&rsquo;s according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office; final figures will come from the White House later this month.
&ldquo;Despite steady economic growth and low unemployment, annual deficits are growing again after declining from pandemic-era highs,&rdquo; says The New York Times.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s worse than the mainstream lets on. The deficit for fiscal 2024 amounts to 6.4% of America&rsquo;s annual economic output as measured by GDP.
In records going back nearly a century, there are only three times this number has been worse &mdash; World War II, the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic.
You&rsquo;ll notice none of those conditions are present now: No WWII-scale conflict, no financial crisis, no pandemic.
&ldquo;A [nearly] $2 trillion deficit is bad news during a recession and war, but completely unprecedented during peace and prosperity,&rdquo; the Manhattan Institute&rsquo;s Brian Riedl tells The Washington Post.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5r9Ere3nCHsbBPteKM5Fvc/070021cd1f61c0323e2dbd5ff4bf8102/FMF_5Bullets_Chart_1011.png" alt="unprecedented" width="540px" />
As we mentioned last month, the pandemic set the federal government on a permanently higher trajectory of spending. This chart makes it obvious there&rsquo;s no going back to a pre-pandemic &ldquo;normal.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1hahbVFl8Sccb7v2vMMRvg/87c0453ed1fdd25cc06ddefaad7eab7c/5_Bullets_Chart_091124.png" alt="no going back to normal" width="540px" />
Now&hellip; imagine how much worse both of these charts will look in the event of war or financial crisis or another pandemic.
(Or maybe all three, seeing as our presumed overlords at the World Economic Forum are entertaining the likelihood of a <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2023/01/17/davos-whitewashing-the-great-reset/">&ldquo;polycrisis.&rdquo;</a>)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Still worse is this: &ldquo;Neither candidate for the nation&rsquo;s highest office has offered any hint of understanding the problem, let alone doing anything about it,&rdquo; writes Bill Bonner, the founder of Paradigm&rsquo;s parent company.
&ldquo;To the contrary, each aims to make it worse with some combination of tax cuts and spending increases&hellip;
&ldquo;In the broadest and simplest analysis... a nation should seek peace and prosperity. Then, citizens are able to pursue happiness however they choose. But to have peace and prosperity, the feds have to eschew war and inflation. Instead, America&rsquo;s elites &mdash; the people who control the government &mdash; are choosing bombs, boondoggles and B.S. on a scale never before seen in the history of man.&rdquo;
A reckoning is inevitable. Our guidance today is the same as it was <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/12-days-to-dollar-demolition-summit">yesterday</a> in anticipation of the &ldquo;dollar demolition summit&rdquo; in Russia later this month: As Jim Rickards has long recommended, a 10% gold allocation in your portfolio will cover your bases for any eventuality.
Adds Paradigm&rsquo;s recovering investment banker Sean Ring: &ldquo;While tech has provided gobsmacking returns in recent years, precious metals now offer a compelling alternative.&rdquo;
Sean just wrapped up a &ldquo;Gold Week&rdquo; at our sister e-letter, the Rude Awakening: <a href="https://rudeawakening.info">We encourage you to check out his article archive here</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Attack on Iran: Inevitable but Not Imminent
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The oil market ends the week on tenterhooks, as a U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran seems inevitable but not necessarily imminent.
The drip-drip-drip of hints has come all week. On Tuesday, NBC reported that Washington is considering its own airstrikes on Iran in addition to those by Tel Aviv. Yesterday, Axios reported that Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu &ldquo;moved closer to an understanding on the scope of Israel's planned retaliation against Iran.&rdquo;
That said, the Times of Israel reports that the discussions &ldquo;will continue in the days ahead.&rdquo;
How many days, no one is specifying. In case you&rsquo;re keeping count, 25 days remain before U.S. Election Day. If an attack on Iran is this year&rsquo;s &ldquo;October surprise,&rdquo; it will be the most telegraphed October surprise in decades.
In the meantime, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is little changed from yesterday&rsquo;s close at $75.67. Since Wednesday it&rsquo;s traded both below $72 and above $78.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Meanwhile, the Dow and the S&amp;P 500 are on track to end the week at record levels. At last check the S&amp;P has crested 5,800 for the first time.
Yes, the tech-heavy Nasdaq is lagging &mdash; having gone three months without reclaiming its July record. But Paradigm&rsquo;s floor-trading veteran Alan Knuckman believes it will play catch-up soon enough.
&ldquo;The Nasdaq right now is 2% off the all-time forever highs, but it's still up 35% in the last 52 weeks,&rdquo; Alan tells readers of The Profit Wire. &ldquo;Forty times the Nasdaq has set new records in 2024 alone and it shouldn't be long for that to happen once again.&rdquo;
Big movers today include Tesla &mdash; down 8% after Elon Musk&rsquo;s big reveal of a &ldquo;Cybercab&rdquo; last night.
<blockquote>➢ If you&rsquo;re a Paradigm Mastermind Group member, keep an eye on your inbox today for follow-up coverage about the tiny company that our team believes will be key to making Musk&rsquo;s plans a reality.</blockquote>
Meanwhile, earnings season is underway with a &ldquo;beat&rdquo; by JPMorgan Chase on both revenue and profits; checking our screens, JPM is up 4.5% from yesterday&rsquo;s close.
The big economic number of the day is the producer price index. The month-to-month change was flat. But the year-over-year change is a 1.8% increase &mdash; up from 1.7% the month earlier.
Thus, inflation at the wholesale level is moving in the wrong direction. It will reach the consumer level sooner or later&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Not Nearly Enough Nukes
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />It&rsquo;s not exactly a surprise, but &ldquo;the Biden administration is working on plans to bring additional decommissioned nuclear power reactors back online to help meet soaring demand for emissions-free electricity,&rdquo; says the Reuters newswire.
Plans are already underway to restart two mothballed nuclear plants &mdash; the undamaged unit at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and the Palisades plant in Michigan.
Asked at a Reuters conference in New York whether additional plants could be restarted, White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re working on it in a very concrete way. There are two I can think of&rdquo; &mdash; although he wouldn&rsquo;t say where they are.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />But there&rsquo;s an elephant in the room. It takes years to spin up shuttered nuclear reactors &mdash; perhaps not enough time to avert rolling blackouts.
Bank of America researchers issued a report this month forecasting an explosion in demand for electricity &mdash; &ldquo;driven by the re-shoring of industry, the development of data and crypto mining centers and the electrification of buildings, transportation, and infrastructure.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll remind you once more of the <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-monster-that-ate-the-power-grid-ai#5">prodigious demands</a> that AI places on the power grid: The restarted Three Mile Island reactor will be used by only one customer &mdash; Microsoft.
The Bank of America analysts project the need for an additional 100 gigawatts of capacity by 2035 &mdash; and perhaps as much as 300 gigawatts.
The amount of juice that will be generated by these revived nuke plants? About one gigawatt each.
Bonus points: Palisades won&rsquo;t be up and running for another two years, and TMI Unit 1 won&rsquo;t be ready again until 2028.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Update: The Nord Stream Whodunit
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />There&rsquo;s now an eyewitness account that U.S. Navy ships were in the vicinity of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline shortly before it was sabotaged in September 2022.
As you might recall, the mainstream immediately latched onto a narrative that the attack was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin &mdash; even though there was zero incentive for him to do so. After all, Russia needed the revenue from its natural gas customers in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
The narrative fell apart over time and by this summer, the mainstream settled on the story that it was Ukrainian saboteurs &mdash; never mind that they likely lacked the skill and materiel to pull it off.
Our own Jim Rickards stuck his neck out in January 2023 when he said President Biden ordered the attack. Days later, an article by the legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh corroborated that assessment.
Late last month, the Danish newspaper Politiken published an interview with John Anker Nielsen, the harbormaster at Denmark&rsquo;s Christians&oslash; Island &mdash; not far from where Nord Stream 2 runs under the Baltic Sea.
He says in the days before the attack, he noticed some ships in the distance. Their transponders had been turned off. He suspected there&rsquo;d been an accident. There was not.
&ldquo;Four or five days before the Nord Stream explosions,&rdquo; reports Politiken, &ldquo;he was with the rescue service from Christians&oslash; because there were some ships with their radios turned off. It turned out they were U.S. Navy ships. When the rescue service approached them, he was asked by the naval command to turn back.&rdquo;
No, the ironclad proof still isn&rsquo;t there. But when examining means, motive and opportunity, the most likely suspect is &mdash; well, we even ran a meme about it the week it happened&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5u2rCHm3WNGUQiE6JJwS4g/f6b4757fe62463390b14593055ed0bdb/I-did-that.png" alt="i did that" width="450px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Dems Throw the Race?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />In light of the botched federal response to recent natural disasters, a reader writes: &ldquo;Is it possible the Democratic leadership knows they are going to lose and lose badly?
&ldquo;Just look at all the poor choices they are making &mdash; especially those they are promoting to be head of the country, plus many other things of note.
&ldquo;Why not do as much damage as possible in the time they have left, give the election to Trump and then see him and Republicans flounder trying to resolve all the complexities that were left to resolve in four short years, and when Americans see that he couldn't do it, the next election leaves the Democrats with the best chance to retake office in a big way. What's four years to a politician?&rdquo;
Dave: You&rsquo;re articulating something that sprang to my mind after the first attempt on Trump&rsquo;s life, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-madness-is-just-beginning">when it seemed he might coast to an easy victory</a>.
So yeah: For all their hand-wringing about Trump&rsquo;s threat to &ldquo;our democracy,&rdquo; it&rsquo;s at least conceivable that Democrats would be content to leave him in charge of a rapidly spreading dumpster fire. Then they can &ldquo;ride to the rescue&rdquo; in 2028 and dominate both the White House and Congress &mdash; as they did for 14 years after FDR&rsquo;s election in 1932.
Maybe there&rsquo;s something to it, maybe not.
People who follow such matters more closely than I say Kamala Harris needs at least a 3 percentage-point margin in the national popular vote to overcome Trump&rsquo;s advantage in the Electoral College tally. (Biden&rsquo;s margin in 2020 was 4.5 points.)
For the moment that looks like a steep climb.
There is one compelling item of anecdotal evidence to support the Dems-have-given-up thesis: Saturday Night Live has taken to <a href="https://x.com/GrahamAllen_1/status/1842876430939492614">roasting</a> Kamala Harris.
This is the same SNL that during the Trump administration did a cringeworthy <a href="https://x.com/nbcsnl/status/1069116519207063553">chorus-line paean</a> to the Russiagate special counsel called &ldquo;All I Want for Christmas Is Mueller.&rdquo;
Go figure, huh?
Have a good weekend,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
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Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

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As the week winds down, we have several loose ends to wrap up – none more important to your financial future than this one… 

Unprecedented

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The media is ignoring it, but a global summit gets underway in 12 more days — and the future of the dollar is at the top of the agenda.

12 Days to Dollar Demolition Summit

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Next Crypto Surge (Underway Now)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Don&rsquo;t look now, but Bitcoin sits at its highest level in nearly three months.
A sharp rally coincided with the opening of the stock market in the United States this morning. At last check, the flagship crypto is over $67,000 for the first time since late July.
Sooner or later, Bitcoin is set to burst through its March 2024 record over $73,000. Certainly that&rsquo;s the case if history is any guide.
A few weeks after that March peak came the every-four-years &ldquo;halving&rdquo; event &mdash; in which the rewards from Bitcoin mining are cut in half.
After a halving, it takes twice as much computing power to generate the same quantity of new Bitcoin. This is what&rsquo;s built into the Bitcoin algorithm to keep its supply strictly limited &mdash; unlike U.S. dollars and other fiat currencies that governments can print willy-nilly.
Typically, Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto space rally strongly in the 15&ndash;18 months after a halving.
Here&rsquo;s another way to look at this four-year cycle, recently posted on Xwitter&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5oIjKByRaAsZ5e3MPekXkT/06dc40acfae6aeeadd1e47342477e320/Altcoin.png" alt="altcoin daily" width="540px" />
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> On Friday, Paradigm&rsquo;s top crypto analyst Chris Campbell wrote of an &ldquo;upcoming surge&rdquo; that &ldquo;could be massive, a movement that will likely catch many off guard.&rdquo;
As a senior analyst for our crypto-and-AI authority James Altucher, Chris offered several items of supporting evidence.
For starters, &ldquo;Bitcoin reserves on exchanges are hitting levels we haven&rsquo;t seen in six years, signaling that more people are holding their Bitcoin rather than selling it. Historically, when reserves drop, we often see a significant price increase.&rdquo;
Chris also points us to research showing that more people are using crypto now than were using the internet in 1997. Given what happened with internet growth after 1997, that&rsquo;s a very promising trajectory.
Oh, and returning to the aforementioned four-year cycle? What else happens every four years along with Bitcoin halvings? U.S. presidential elections. The pattern is uncanny&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4562GxEDp6AXyILuhnuPRL/f624ab24be5f581d170a0d44c571c70c/ElectionsChart.png" alt="elections chart" width="540px" />
The surge appears to be underway this morning. And it&rsquo;s probably just the beginning.

[Editor&rsquo;s note: As attractive as crypto is looking right now, James Altucher is pounding the table about what he calls the most explosive subniche of the stock market.
In fact he&rsquo;s putting the final touches on a &ldquo;beta test&rdquo; invitation for his newest research service, specializing in these very companies that he says historically have &ldquo;thrown off some of the biggest gains you&rsquo;ve ever seen in your life.&rdquo;
But we&rsquo;re keeping a strict cap on the number of beta testers &mdash; 250. If you even think you might want in, <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2367677">you&rsquo;ll need to click here and act fast</a>.]

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />A Fed Pause? Already?!
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The Federal Reserve has no choice but to cut interest rates again next month &mdash; even if it risks rekindling the fires of inflation.
That&rsquo;s the assessment of Paradigm&rsquo;s Zach Scheidt after poring over the recent inflation and job numbers. Both came in &ldquo;hotter than expected.&rdquo;
&ldquo;A strong labor market and reigniting inflation are definitely a concern for the Fed going forward,&rdquo; Zach says. &ldquo;The Fed doesn&rsquo;t want to cut rates too quickly into a strong economy because that could reignite inflation even further.&rdquo;
But as for the chatter you might be seeing in the media? About the Fed pausing rate cuts after starting on a new rate-cutting cycle only last month? Forget it.
As Zach puts it, &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t put the cat back in the bag once it&rsquo;s out.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Of course, these numbers are cause for concern with the Fed, but generally speaking, the Fed doesn&rsquo;t like to start something and then stop immediately. It wouldn't be a good look for the Fed if they did because it would show they are out of touch with reality.
&ldquo;So for credibility's sake, I think the Fed will continue to cut by a small amount in November and December.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Maybe that&rsquo;s what the stock market&rsquo;s been sniffing out as the major indexes hover near all-time highs.
Those indexes are taking a breather today &mdash; the S&amp;P 500 down a quarter percent to 5,844. But the momentum is still to the upside. Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner sees &ldquo;what is beginning to feel like an inevitable year-end melt-up.&rdquo;
To be sure, &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll get our fair share of pullbacks and gut checks&hellip; But the scales are tipping in favor of the bulls &mdash; that much is clear.&rdquo;
Once more we&rsquo;ll point out how resilient the stock market looks in spite of a rallying dollar. The U.S. dollar index (DXY) now sits over 103 &mdash; levels last seen in early August. The rebound off 100 in late September has been relentless. Any other time that might prove to be a drag on stocks &mdash; but not now.
Likewise, gold is hanging in there despite that dollar strength &mdash; the bid up $11 today to $2,660. Gold has spent all of October over $2,600 &mdash; a healthy consolidation after a furious run-up from July through September.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Market Manipulations? (Oil Today)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />If it&rsquo;s thrills-n-chills you&rsquo;re looking for in the markets today, it&rsquo;s in crude &mdash; a barrel of West Texas Intermediate down 5% on the day and about to break below $70.
Perhaps it helps that, according to The Washington Post, Israel does not plan to hit Iran&rsquo;s oil industry whenever it launches an attack on Iran sometime before U.S. Election Day.
In addition, OPEC has once more slashed its forecast for crude demand growth &mdash; both for the rest of this year and 2025.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But it&rsquo;s hard not to look at a move like today&rsquo;s and wonder if a &ldquo;hidden hand&rdquo; is at work.
The market for oil futures has been used to mask a host of manipulations for more than three decades.
The veteran oil industry journalist Jim Norman documented these manipulations extensively in his 2008 book The Oil Card.
Modern oil futures as we know them began trading in New York in 1983 &mdash; only months after President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 66. Under NSDD-66, Washington began colluding with Saudi Arabia to drive down oil prices. Objective: Make Soviet oil exports dirt-cheap and bankrupt the Evil Empire.
One of the leading global oil traders in the 1970s quickly became one of the biggest players in the nascent oil futures market. Transworld Oil, controlled by John Deuss, accounted for up to 30% of NYMEX oil trade &mdash; most of it on the short side, betting prices would fall. Deuss had long-rumored ties to the CIA&hellip; and it was CIA chief William Casey who did much to implement NSDD-66.
Crude traded around $30 a barrel at the time NYMEX oil futures began trading in 1983. By the late '80s, oil was in a range between $12&ndash;22. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6FxhbUWY6IQeJbHnjINZ30/abcb6af28983de16ceb5f08e845d659b/BerlinWall.png" alt="berlin wall" width="540px" />

Made possible in part by cheap oil... [Photo reproduced by Wikimedia Commons user Lear 21]
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> More manipulations took place as oil climbed relentlessly during the early 2000s. 
The geopolitical objectives had shifted: High oil prices would act as a brake on Chinese economic growth. And the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 would help make it happen. The law "would eventually turn the oil futures market from mainly a zero-sum risk-hedging and price-discovery vehicle into a quasi-securities market," wrote Mr. Norman.
"The price of oil is now less dependent on the actual supply and demand for 'wet' barrels than on the huge sums of money pouring into NYMEX futures from the pension and other investment funds, tacitly enabled and encouraged by U.S. regulators. Daily oil volumes on the NYMEX now dwarf global physical oil consumption."
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Indeed, there may be as many as 100 "paper barrels" of oil trading for each barrel of the real thing.
"The volumes are far, far out of whack with any reasonable need to hedge physical supply/demand risk," Norman told your editor during a 2013 interview. "The amount of funds needed to dramatically influence crude prices would be 'chump change' compared with the sums needed in the debt and equity markets."
The motivation for today&rsquo;s plunge? It&rsquo;s tempting to speculate that the aim is a quick drop in gasoline prices ahead of Election Day, the better to benefit the Democrats.
But that seems a little too obvious, no? Besides, at $3.20 a gallon, the national average for regular unleaded is already 40 cents cheaper than it was a year ago&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Power Struggle: Big Tech vs. Homeowners
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />With AI consuming ever more of the electric grid, a strange power struggle is emerging in Ohio &mdash; pitting Big Tech and state utility regulators on one side, versus the power company and consumers on the other.
The story begins in May when the state&rsquo;s big power utility &mdash; AEP Ohio &mdash; issued a proposal to the state&rsquo;s utility regulator, setting financial requirements for anyone who wanted to connect a data center to the power grid.
The terms included 10-year contracts and an agreement to pay for at least 90% of the electricity they request.
That seems like a reasonable demand considering that AEP would have to build out additional capacity to accommodate the data centers. How much? AEP says it currently has 600 megawatts set aside for data centers in central Ohio, but it&rsquo;s had inquiries from customers seeking 30 gigawatts &mdash; a staggering 50X increase.
Big Tech did not like these terms. At all. Said Amazon over the summer: &ldquo;AEP Ohio should not single out data centers as the sole cause of &mdash; or solution to &mdash; the problem of capacity constraints."
An outfit called the Data Center Coalition &mdash; made up of Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook among others &mdash; was even more forceful: "If AEP Ohio&rsquo;s unprecedented proposal is adopted, Ohio will send a clear signal to the data center industry that AEP Ohio&rsquo;s territory is closed for business."
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> This month, the Data Center Coalition issued its own proposal to the regulators. 
The details are extremely hazy. Here&rsquo;s how The Columbus Dispatch tried to make sense of it: &ldquo;The settlement includes creating long-term commitments for customers that use large amounts of electricity. It also calls for a PUCO [Public Utilities Commission of Ohio] investigation to alleviate near-term system capacity constraints in central Ohio at a faster pace and lower the cost of new transmission.&rdquo;
A lot of mumbo jumbo. But AEP doesn&rsquo;t like it, nor does PUCO&rsquo;s staff. The state-appointed consumer watchdog, Ohio Consumers&rsquo; Counsel Maureen Willis, had no trouble cutting through the confusion.
&ldquo;While business growth in Ohio is a good thing,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;residential utility consumers &mdash; who already pay exorbitant transmission costs &mdash; should not be forced to subsidize utility investment for data centers operated by multibillion-dollar companies.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll be watching this case closely. If the Data Center Coalition gets its way, look for similar efforts in other states &mdash; pushing demand higher, raising prices for homeowners and maybe even running the risk of planned blackouts. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />An Encouraging Word
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;I for one thank you for your daily missives &mdash; keep it up,&rdquo; says a reader who writes in from time to time. &ldquo;Don't let those that disagree with you get the best of you.
As far as the voting argument, people can vote for whomever they want &mdash; that's their right. However, I agree with Richard Maybury and plan on NOT voting for either major party candidate. To me, voting for either one would be throwing away my vote. Out of over 330 million people in this country, those two are the best we can do?
&ldquo;Thanks again Dave. I look forward to seeing the daily FREE 5 Bullets and don't plan on canceling any of my subscriptions. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!&rdquo;
Dave: An oldie but a goodie&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/K6TDWzHAyHzzxlcOgPIAz/9cb301601ee4d04be01d4493d4a44c04/Vote.png" alt="vote" width="540px" />
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

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Don’t look now, but Bitcoin sits at its highest level in nearly three months.

An Out-of-Nowhere Crypto Rally

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Energy Storage in Space
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Chinese scientists have achieved a breakthrough in battery technology that could transform energy storage. 
Researchers at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics developed new organic molecules for aqueous organic flow batteries (AOFBs).
<ul>
<li>Mechanism: Aqueous organic flow batteries generate electrical current using molecules dissolved in liquids stored on opposite sides of a membrane.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>New Molecules: The Chinese team created novel naphthalene-based derivative molecules that remain stable in normal air, minimizing side reactions that degrade battery performance.</li>
</ul>
In fact, the study &ldquo;found that the battery worked for about 22 days when exposed to continuous airflow &lsquo;without obvious capacity decay,&rsquo;&rdquo; says The Cool Down (TCD).
Of course, no discussion of battery technology would be complete without taking a look underneath the hood at Tesla&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Tesla Energy reported record-breaking energy storage deployments for its Powerwall and Megapack products in the second quarter of 2024, according to Paradigm editor &mdash; and James Altucher&rsquo;s right-hand man &mdash; Chris Campbell.
Powerwall is Tesla's rechargeable lithium-ion battery designed for residential use. With a capacity of 13.5 kWh, Powerwall stores excess solar energy or grid electricity for later use, providing backup power during outages and helping homeowners optimize energy usage, ideally for cost savings.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/8Eou2M7D7Dgl70rMQWGHT/d98a09a3603653f9596a3332dd170f87/powerwall.png" alt="powerwall" width="540px" />

Source: Tesla.com Powerwall 3
Megapack, on the other hand, is Tesla's large-scale energy storage solution, intended for commercial applications. Each Megapack unit can store up to 3.9 MWh of energy&hellip;

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1TLVif0iTRieBKkt6bAoyN/9f08ddc63f9012a705bbc80c07724aed/megapack.png" alt="megapack" width="540px" />

Source: Tesla.com One Megapack unit
Meanwhile, multiple Megapacks can be combined to create energy storage installations &mdash; to be used for grid stabilization, load shedding and managing power supply and demand more efficiently.
Tesla's energy storage business? Showing massive growth potential.
Tesla expects its energy-storage revenue to outpace revenue from its automotive business this year.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;In practical terms, this means Tesla installed more battery storage systems than ever before so far in 2024,&rdquo; Chris says.
&ldquo;While Tesla Energy&rsquo;s 6.9 GWh worth of deployments in Q3 2024 are lower than Q2 2024&rsquo;s 9.4 GWh, it remains extremely impressive. It is, if any, still the highest energy deployments in the third quarter by Tesla Energy to date,&rdquo; according to Teslarati.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3hmuSdsngtQCa3hYJDQAL3/0834fcb69d011de2eddfbafb470ea1b1/Tesla-energy.png" alt="tesla energy" width="540px" />

Source: X
&ldquo;Large-scale storage can help us out here on Earth, no doubt,&rdquo; says Chris.
&ldquo;Powerwall and Megapack technologies are training grounds for creating self-sufficient energy systems. (Even if nuclear power is the play, advanced storage systems are necessary.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;These storage solutions are crucial for managing intermittent solar power&hellip; key for Mars,&rdquo; Chris adds.
To Chris&rsquo; way of thinking, all Elon Musk's ventures are interconnected with the goal of establishing life on Mars. (And here you thought yesterday&rsquo;s <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/starting-an-ai-company-from-scratch">episode</a> was ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel.)
The Cybertruck, for example, uses the same stainless steel as SpaceX's Starship&hellip; Designed perhaps as a prototype Mars ground vehicle? Musk said as much when he X-tweeted the Cybertruck will be the &ldquo;official truck of Mars.&rdquo;
And other Musk projects align with Mars colonization:
<ul>
<li>Starlink for interplanetary communication</li>
<li>The Boring Company for underground Martian habitats</li>
<li>Neuralink for enhancing human capabilities in space</li>
<li>Tesla robots for automated labor on Mars.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Once you see it, you can&rsquo;t unsee it,&rdquo; Chris says. &ldquo;All these seemingly disparate and random moves are part of [Musk&rsquo;s] master plan.
&ldquo;And there&rsquo;s one thing that&rsquo;s going to pull it all together: AI,&rdquo; Chris concludes. &ldquo;Artificial intelligence isn&rsquo;t just a trend,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s the driving force behind the most groundbreaking advancements of today.&rdquo;

And don&rsquo;t forget Musk is about to reveal another huge piece of the puzzle tomorrow at Tesla&rsquo;s AI-themed investor day event.
Of course, Musk&rsquo;s companies can&rsquo;t do it alone. Tesla might well be partnering with a small AI company. Without it, Musk&rsquo;s plans would be dead in the water.
Says James Altucher: &ldquo;If Musk mentions this stock by name tomorrow when he gives his speech in Burbank, California, shares of this AI stock could explode.&rdquo;
Of course, the time to be in position is before Musk starts name-dropping. James urges you to <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2366069">click here and check out this talk with his top tech analyst Ray Blanco while there&rsquo;s still time</a>.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />United States v. Google
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Yesterday, the DOJ filed a proposed remedy framework &mdash; &ldquo;asking a judge to force Google to divest parts of its business,&rdquo; according to an article at The Register.
&ldquo;Structural remedies&rdquo; in antitrust cases &ldquo;typically refers to the breaking up of a company into smaller businesses, or divestment of particular assets. In this specific case, that might mean Google's Chrome browser or its Android mobile operating system.
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Within the proposed remedy framework, the DoJ says it is considering remedies to address four categories of harms related to Google's conduct, comprising search distribution and revenue sharing; generation and display of search results; advertising scale and monetization; and accumulation and use of data,&rdquo; The Register says.</li>
</ul>
If the DOJ pushes its case through federal court, &ldquo;it would represent arguably the biggest regulatory intervention in the history of Big Tech,&rdquo; the BBC notes.
In a blog post response, Google&rsquo;s vice president of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, claims &ldquo;government overreach.&rdquo;
(Which is rich coming from the company which quietly jettisoned its &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be evil&rdquo; motto after partnering with the DOD on <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2018/05/21/bad-70s-flashback/#220">AI-drone tech</a> Project Maven in 2018. And embarrassing itself with the <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ukrainflation#3">ultra-woke AI platform</a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ukrainflation#3"> Gemini</a> early this year.)
GOOG shares so far today are down about 2%. Taking a look at the overall stock market, the three major U.S. indexes are in the green. The Dow leads the way, up 0.70% to 42,375; at the same time, the Nasdaq and S&amp;P 500 have both gained about 0.50% to 18,270 and 5,780 respectively.
As for commodities, crude&rsquo;s pulled back about 0.50% to $73.17 for a barrel of WTI. (More on oil in a moment.) Gold, too, has pulled back about 0.10% to $2,632.30 per ounce. Silver, however, is up 0.80% to $30.85.
Peeking at crypto, Bitcoin is up 0.10% to $62,250 while Ethereum&rsquo;s up about 1% to $2,460.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Optimal &ldquo;Fear Trade&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the ideal fear trade that&rsquo;s ready to blast higher over the next few weeks?&rdquo; asks Paradigm&rsquo;s chart hound Greg &ldquo;Gunner&rdquo; Guenthner.
&ldquo;Of course, the situation in the Middle East is aiding the dramatic rise in oil and energy names&hellip;
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Goldman Sachs is now warning Brent crude could see $90-plus if Iranian oil comes off the market.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Turning to WTI, buyers have stepped up every time light crude has retreated to the mid-$60 range. And thanks to the fear factor, it has enjoyed a 15% bounce off those lows.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;You simply cannot buy an index fund and expect to capture any returns from the energy sector, especially since many of the most prolific &lsquo;dirty&rsquo; energy names have been purged from the indexes,&rdquo; says Gunner.
&ldquo;Case in point: XOM. The Dow booted Exxon Mobil in 2020 shortly after oil futures went negative in the midst of the pandemic crash. At the time, XOM was trading near 15-year lows.
&ldquo;Not anymore! XOM is casually hitting new all-time highs this week,&rdquo; Gunner says. &ldquo;The stock has now climbed around 300% off its 2020 lows&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1LOkoKaISRcQlu3YyNXSoY/61ff335018b04e02dbd03baf8eab7fa8/Javier.png" alt="javier" width="540px" />
&ldquo;XOM also doubled its Permian Basin holdings after acquiring Pioneer Natural Resources for $60 billion last fall.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;As more investors notice Exxon Mobil&rsquo;s sly breakout, money will flow upstream to the exploration and production industry,&rdquo; adds Gunner.
&ldquo;These are the companies pulling the raw material from the earth: Transocean (RIG), Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Diamondback (FANG) and Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO).
&ldquo;We could also see additional mergers and acquisitions in the sector since ESG makes it more attractive for the majors to acquire, rather than develop, acreage,&rdquo; Gunner notes:
<ul>
<li>The FTC recently approved Chevron&rsquo;s acquisition of Hess</li>
<li>Diamondback Energy closed its merger with Endeavour Energy Resources last month</li>
<li>Even midstreams are merging, with Oneok acquiring Magellan Midstream Partners last fall.</li>
</ul>
Gunner&rsquo;s takeaway: &ldquo;Once money starts pouring in &mdash; combined with a little bit of fear &mdash; we&rsquo;ll know we&rsquo;re in the thick of a strong energy bull,&rdquo; he says.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />&ldquo;Deeply Undervalued Gold Miners&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Despite gold's impressive 27.71% year-to-date gain, mining stocks have lagged behind, creating a compelling investment opportunity.
&ldquo;We believe the stage is set for a powerful advance in gold mining equities,&rdquo; says heavyweight industry analyst John Hathaway, who notes that &ldquo;precious metals mining shares are just beginning to stir.&rdquo;
This disconnect between gold prices and mining stock performance has created what Hathaway calls &ldquo;significant catch-up potential for deeply undervalued gold miners.&rdquo;
Factors supporting Hathaway&rsquo;s outlook include&hellip;
<ol>
<li>Favorable fundamentals: &ldquo;The investment fundamentals for miners have rarely been so favorable against a backdrop of such disinterest.&rdquo; For instance, Q3 2024 average gold prices are up 18.8% year-over-year, which should boost miners' earnings.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li value="2">Underpriced gold: Many investors remain skeptical about gold's sustainability at current prices, but the mainstream financial media has underreported variables like de-dollarization and central bank buying.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li value="3">Lack of Western participation: &ldquo;Gold's 78.92% five-year advance has occurred with almost no participation from U.S. and European investors,&rdquo; says Hathaway, suggesting significant potential for inflows when sentiment shifts.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li value="4">Early-stage bull market: &ldquo;The current bull market for gold is embryonic,&rdquo; he adds, with classic signs like widespread skepticism and under-positioning present.</li>
</ol>
Hathaway concludes: &ldquo;Gold stocks, in our opinion, are coiling for a sharp advance during the remainder of 2024.&rdquo;
But he advises patience: &ldquo;Valuations remain exceptionally attractive [and] the upside potential that likely lies ahead may be well worth any additional wait.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Big Brother: Kuwait and U.K. Editions
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Kuwait will begin enforcing its biometric fingerprinting requirement for citizens who missed the Sept. 30 deadline. 
In fact, nearly 60,000 Kuwaitis failed to register in time, and now the government has set a final deadline of Nov. 1 for citizens to comply.
And the punishment for noncompliance is exceptionally harsh: nothing short of financial cancellation. 
&ldquo;Individuals who have not completed the biometric process are subjected to immediate account freezing and banking transaction suspension,&rdquo; Arab Times reports.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2W9Ht195d07lbLdX8y8Xwo/18525d271e4154e7ab953437df6b7d16/banks.png" alt="banks" width="540px" />

Source: X
Banks are already notifying affected customers that by mid-October, their bank cards will be deactivated.
By Nov. 1? Even in-person withdrawals will be blocked. Plus, the government says it will suspend civil ID cards for non-compliant individuals.
As one might imagine, daily registrations have increased from 600 to 6,000 as people rush to comply.
On a less serious (but still intrusive) note&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Starting Oct.1, 2024, British chicken owners &mdash; namely, backyard enthusiasts who keep 50 or fewer chickens &mdash; are now required to register their birds with the government. 
The regulation, ostensibly aimed at combating bird flu, requires the registration of even a single chicken. The process involves providing contact details and bird location to the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA).
And the rule extends to other domesticated birds as well &mdash; if a pet bird spends any time outdoors, &ldquo;for example to be exercised, trained or taken to bird gatherings or shows,&rdquo; according to guidance at Gov.uk.
Of course, cheeky pranksters briefly crashed the government&rsquo;s website by registering rubber chickens, roast chickens and even chicken nuggets. Well done, you! 
But the law is no joke: Bird owners who run afoul of registration could risk fines of &pound;5,000 or even being cooped up for six months in prison.
What a world&hellip;
Take care, reader. And join us again tomorrow!
Best regards,
Emily Clancy Associate editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

shutterstock 360211214

According to Paradigm editor Chris Campbell, all Elon Musk's ventures are interconnected with the goal of establishing life on Mars.

Musk’s Unified Mars Theory

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Musk&rsquo;s Mission
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies,&rdquo; wrote the science-fiction legend Douglas Adams, in a collection of essays published shortly after his death in 2001.
Adams&rsquo; rules go like this&hellip;
<ol>
<li>&ldquo;Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li value="2">&ldquo;Anything that's invented between when you're 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li value="3">&ldquo;Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things."</li>
</ol>
Adams is a hero of Elon Musk &mdash; now 53 years old. To hear Musk tell it, Adams&rsquo; The Hitchhiker&rsquo;s Guide to the Galaxy helped him through an &ldquo;existential crisis&rdquo; at age 12.
More recently, Musk drew on the punchline to Hitchhiker&rsquo;s plot &mdash; a supercomputer declaring that the answer to the meaning of life is the number 42 &mdash; when choosing the formal launch date of his AI company xAI last year.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5qRPI1KCCFc6KCXEPmwviO/77cf52ddc949319413143f1c5e62f8c4/Elon.png" alt="elon tweet" width="540px" />
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> "He's telling me, 'I'm gonna start from scratch an AI company 'cause I don't trust Sam Altman,'" recalls Musk biographer Walter Isaacson.
Isaacson followed Musk around for two years in preparation for the book Elon Musk, published in 2023. He reflected on the experience a few days ago during an interview with CNBC.
As you might be aware, Musk had a hand in the founding of Altman&rsquo;s OpenAI in 2015. They had a falling-out no later than 2020, when Musk hit out at what he thought was OpenAI&rsquo;s lack of transparency. By last year, he sued OpenAI &mdash; accusing it of abandoning its mission to develop AI for the betterment of humanity.
Musk is on record asserting a 10&ndash;20% probability that AI could destroy humanity. To hear Isaacson tell it, Musk has taken it upon himself to &ldquo;come in and save us from hostile AI.
&ldquo;He read Isaac Asimov, he read the robot series, he thought the robots might turn on us" &mdash; a reference to Asimov&rsquo;s collection of short stories I, Robot.
Hmmm&hellip;. it&rsquo;s a little worrisome, this savior complex. It&rsquo;s the same impulse that&rsquo;s driven Bill Gates to muck up everything from public education to public health.
But let&rsquo;s give Musk the benefit of the doubt here, especially ahead of Tesla&rsquo;s AI-themed investor day event two days from now.
As we mentioned last week, the title is a nod to Asimov&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/YNs33VECYrXrvDnYURMXU/3323aa49ca1609664d8f5985c4ee1e29/WeRobot.png" alt="we robot" width="350px" />
Musk is going all-out for this event &mdash; staging it not at a Tesla facility as he has in years gone by but on the Warner Bros. lot in Hollywood.
Paradigm&rsquo;s AI authority James Altucher is convinced it will be revolutionary: &ldquo;This has the potential to not only shake the markets,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;but also transform the life of every man, woman and child in America.&rdquo;

If you haven&rsquo;t yet watched our interview with James&rsquo; No. 1 tech analyst Ray Blanco, you need to do so ahead of Musk&rsquo;s announcement on Thursday. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2365629">Click here to watch it right away.</a>

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Resilient Stocks, Resilient Gold
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The resilience of the stock market and gold this month are remarkable in light of a strengthening dollar.
The U.S. dollar index has jumped 2% since the last day of September &mdash; a big jump in a short time when you&rsquo;re talking about currencies.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1uQyOWWIYRAYm38lgOzOjM/2a9e91e6a19a0905bfdc3c66b39cace6/FMF_5Bullets_Chart_1008.png" alt="galloping greenbacks" width="540px" />
A big driver of the move is a fall in the euro &mdash; which makes up 57% of the index.
All else being equal, a stronger dollar translates to weaker stocks and weaker gold. But not now.
The S&amp;P 500&rsquo;s record close on Sept. 30 more or less coincides with the start of the dollar rally spotlighted on the chart. But at 5,726, the index is barely two-thirds of a percent beneath that record. Gold, meanwhile, continues to hold the line on $2,600.
Elsewhere in the markets, Treasury yields continue to creep higher &mdash; the 10-year note now up to 4.05%. Bitcoin has sunk below $63,000. And silver is proving to be much more volatile than gold &mdash; well over $32 at one point on Friday, but well under $31 today.
But the real volatility is in crude &mdash; down $3.29 to $73.85.
There&rsquo;s no obvious news catalyst. Near as we can tell, Mr. Market was anticipating Israel would attack Iran yesterday to coincide with the first anniversary of the Hamas attack inside Israel. When it didn&rsquo;t happen, it was time to mash the &ldquo;sell&rdquo; button.
Not that the escalation risk has abated, of course&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Small-business owners are feeling more uncertain than ever,&rdquo; says Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business.
The NFIB is out with its monthly Small Business Optimism Index. The headline number is up slightly to 91.5 &mdash; still well below the long-term average in this survey, which goes back 50 years now.
Looking under the hood, the number that really stands out is the uncertainty index &mdash; leaping 11 points to a record 103. (In this instance, higher numbers are bad.)
&ldquo;The election will trigger adjustments to plans once the results are known,&rdquo; write Dunkelberg and colleague Holly Wade. &ldquo;The services sector is still holding up, while manufacturing and housing remain weak. In a few weeks, the picture will become much more certain for Main Street firms.&rdquo;
But in the meantime, &ldquo;uncertainty makes owners hesitant to invest in capital spending and inventory, especially as inflation and financing costs continue to put pressure on their bottom lines.&rdquo;
On the part of the survey asking respondents to identify their single most important problem, inflation is tops, cited by 23%. But the labor shortage might be starting to ease, with 17% citing &ldquo;quality of labor&rdquo; as their biggest concern &mdash; down from 21% a month earlier.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Gold Demand High, Gold Supply Low
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />We&rsquo;ve spent a lot of time in recent years underscoring the demand for gold &mdash; and not nearly enough about the supply.
Demand for gold by central bankers is off the charts ever since Washington hit Moscow with unprecedented sanctions after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For any country not on friendly terms with Washington, gold is an insurance policy.
As for supply&hellip; S&amp;P Global is out with a revealing report about recent gold discoveries. It finds there&rsquo;ve been only five of them since 2020, totaling 17 million ounces.
That&rsquo;s a drop in the proverbial bucket considering 350 deposits were discovered from 1990&ndash;2023 &mdash; totaling 2.9 billion ounces of gold, including past production.
The newer discoveries &ldquo;are scarce and smaller in size,&rdquo; writes S&amp;P&rsquo;s Paul Manalo. &ldquo;None of the discoveries made in the last 10 years have entered the list of the largest 30 gold discoveries, supporting our long-held view that the decade-long focus on older and known deposits limits the chance of finding huge discoveries in early-stage prospects.&rdquo;
His conclusion: &ldquo;The lack of quality discoveries in the recent decade does not bode well for the gold supply.&rdquo;
For years, Paradigm macroeconomics maven Jim Rickards has advised keeping a 10% gold allocation in your portfolio &mdash; preferably in your personal possession, and definitely not in a bank&rsquo;s safe-deposit box.
If you&rsquo;re already there, the next step is a well-chosen speculation in gold mining stocks. And now is an especially good time, since the stocks are lagging the metal and they&rsquo;re poised to play catch-up.
More about that tomorrow&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" /> Malice, Apathy&hellip; or Both?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;I've quite a while ago arrived at the expectation that the government is completely apathetic to the suffering of its citizens,&rdquo; a reader writes&hellip; &ldquo;but after seeing the responses to Palestine, Ohio; Lahaina, Hawaii; and now the Carolinas in the wake of Helene I can't help but ask myself, does the current administration actually wish pain and suffering onto the victims of these disasters?
&ldquo;I would have thought this close to an election that now there is a good excuse to spend more money to try to win over the hearts of voters and there would be a concerted effort to combine disaster aid with campaigning. Instead, I hear that the aid money amounts to the pocket lint of the government checkbook, and now there seem to be efforts to stop rescuers from saving people. As if all that weren't enough, I'm hearing Florida is also about to get hit with a massive storm and I can't imagine the quality of the federal aid improving any between now and then.
&ldquo;I know it's said not to attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity, but I don't see why it can't simply be both, especially with how consistent the government responses have been. Why do you think it is that this is what happens every time?&rdquo;
Dave responds: Beats me. To be sure, &ldquo;DEI&rdquo; figures into the equation. Too, a lot of knowledgeable and experienced boomers are retiring &mdash; and there aren&rsquo;t enough Gen-Xers coming up to take their place.
I can say with certainty it&rsquo;s not the government steering hurricanes in the direction of &ldquo;red&rdquo; enclaves.
Meanwhile, Milton continues to make a beeline for the Tampa Bay area, which your editor called home for about three years in the &rsquo;90s. Even if the winds diminish, the surge is shaping up to be fearsome. Godspeed to anyone trying to get out of harm&rsquo;s way&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Vote &ldquo;Awake&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> On the subject of politics, a reader writes: &ldquo;Us? We're proudly displaying our &lsquo;Giant Comet 2024&rsquo; sign in the front yard.&rdquo;
Heh &mdash; I invoked that one in bumper sticker form <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/39-days">over the summer</a>. I like this one too&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7r6IQPSJiouV5X5arq36KU/0dea3975aa577ad6992fa5801082970a/vote.png" alt="vote" width="350px" />
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Meanwhile, after I took incoming flak from anti-Trumpers in recent days, the pro-Trumpers have to weigh in following the mailbag in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/elon-musk-counter-elite">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;How many wars happened during Trump's administration?&rdquo; asks one. Another vouches for Trump&rsquo;s &ldquo;antiwar&rdquo; bonafides by saying &ldquo;when necessary, the decision is made without pre-disclosure and firmly.&rdquo; Meanwhile, one of our regulars ventures that Trump&rsquo;s approach to war and peace is &ldquo;peace through strength.&rdquo;
Maybe it&rsquo;s just me, but &ldquo;peace through strength&rdquo; does not entail 750 military bases in over 80 countries. Donald Trump did nothing to dismantle that apparatus during his first term, and he&rsquo;s made no promises to do so during his second.
Meanwhile, this &ldquo;he didn&rsquo;t start any new wars!&rdquo; thing is so tiresome.
He tore up arms control treaties with Moscow. He permanently stationed U.S. troops on Russia&rsquo;s borders. He sent lethal weaponry to Ukraine &mdash; a reckless step Barack Obama refused to take.
In the Middle East, he carried on Obama&rsquo;s policy of supporting Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s genocidal war in Yemen &mdash; directly with targeting assistance from the U.S military and indirectly with weapons sales.
I could go on, but you get the idea. I hope.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> A final thought, adding to yesterday&rsquo;s Bullet No. 1 about <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/elon-musk-counter-elite">the &ldquo;counter-elites&rdquo;</a> who are gathering around Trump&hellip;
The co-chair of Trump&rsquo;s transition team, named by Trump in August, is Howard Lutnick &mdash; CEO of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald. From the Financial Times&hellip;
<blockquote>Lutnick said he had given more than $10 million to Trump&rsquo;s 2024 effort and another $500,000 for the transition, and had raised about $75 million for the campaign overall.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The investor, who has known the Republican nominee for years and even appeared in 2008 on Trump&rsquo;s NBC show The Celebrity Apprentice, previously donated to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.</blockquote>
So like Marc Andreessen, here&rsquo;s someone else who supported Clinton only eight years ago but has decided to glom onto Trump because that&rsquo;s where he sees his bread buttered now.
And Trump is perfectly fine with that arrangement. He welcomes anyone into his circle who engages in enough flattery.
Interviewed last week by our favorite political reporter Michael Tracey, Lutnick said he&rsquo;s building a roster of potential appointees with &ldquo;deep, deep national security experience&rdquo; and &ldquo;deep, deep defense experience.&rdquo; He also confirmed that Jared Kushner is &ldquo;actively helping&rdquo; him to find &ldquo;talent.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1QZeTCIfAnrL2UJ6nmocek/f2c4522e7d20ebf6501a21286a464df1/michael.png" alt="michael tweet" width="540px" />
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

shutterstock 2269526291

According to Musk’s biographer, Elon has taken it upon himself to “come in and save us from hostile AI.”

Starting an AI Company From Scratch 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Elon Musk, Leader of the Counter-Elites
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Has a billionaire (other than Donald Trump) ever been this overtly political?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4FQR7a9iI6al5YH7w2Gck6/e3efb4096a0397f6a6edff8f1e3d94b7/the-telegraph.png" alt="the telegraph" width="540px" />
Through their foundations and other vehicles, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett wield their might in more subtle ways than presidential politics. You can even say the same of Michael Bloomberg, his own short-lived run for president in 2019&ndash;2020 notwithstanding.
&ldquo;Elon Musk joined Donald Trump onstage at a rally on Saturday night,&rdquo; reports The Telegraph, &ldquo;as the former president returned to the scene where he was fired at by a would-be assassin&hellip;
&ldquo;There were clear differences this time around. The ex-president was speaking from a podium encased in bulletproof glass. The rooftop used by [Thomas] Crooks had been blocked from view by shipping containers and haulage trucks.&rdquo;
But it&rsquo;s Musk&rsquo;s bunny-hopping appearance that commands our attention this morning.
Not because he said anything unique or newsworthy. (He called this year &ldquo;the most important election of our lifetime.&rdquo; Musk was born in 1971.)
No, it&rsquo;s more than anything he said&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Whether he planned it or not, Musk has made himself the face of a counter-elite in the United States &mdash; maybe even more than Trump.
Counter-elite is a term coined by the Russian-American researcher and writer Peter Turchin.
In books like 2023&rsquo;s End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration, Turchin lays out a thesis that you can&rsquo;t have a civil war without competing groups of elites.
As he sees it, a united ruling elite can maintain control over a population indefinitely even in the face of major grassroots opposition. It&rsquo;s only when the elites start fighting among themselves that the edifice starts to crack.
As we&rsquo;ve chronicled before, there was almost no billionaire support for Donald Trump in 2016. The Wall Street Journal reported that nine of the 10 biggest donors gave to Hillary Clinton. (Home Depot&rsquo;s Bernie Marcus was the 10th.) Among donations of $1 million or more, Clinton collected $180 million, compared with Trump&rsquo;s $33 million.
Eight years later, Trump&rsquo;s elite backers include Musk&hellip; the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen&hellip; and hedge fund operators Bill Ackman and Paul Singer. Andreessen was a Clinton supporter eight years ago. Ackman, too, has a history of backing Democrats and he supported Nikki Haley in the 2024 GOP primaries. Eight years ago, Singer was a Never-Trump Republican.
But Musk is sui generis among this group. Only he commands the status of a rock-star CEO, maybe the first since Steve Jobs. His ranking as the world&rsquo;s richest man &mdash; at $244 billion, he comfortably outpaces No. 2 Jeff Bezos on the Forbes 400 &mdash; only adds to the mystique.
And he was largely apolitical until a few years ago; near as we can tell his &ldquo;red pill&rdquo; moment was when he kept Tesla&rsquo;s factory in Fremont, California open in May 2020, defying Alameda County&rsquo;s lockdown orders.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Earlier this year, we conducted an informal, open-ended survey of reader opinion about Musk.
We welcomed everyone&rsquo;s input, but we were especially interested in the opinions of the people who&rsquo;d come aboard via Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network starting in late 2023.
At the risk of overgeneralizing, this is a group that bristles at the mention of anything adjacent to politics in this e-letter. Some are openly hostile to Donald Trump.
But in the main, the opinion toward Musk was favorable and the criticism was measured. I don&rsquo;t remember anyone saying words to the effect of I hate that fascist and I will unsubscribe at the next mention of him.
This is good and healthy. Because while politics does alter flows of money, you should strive to avoid letting it affect your investment decisions.
Especially in light of Musk&rsquo;s next big public appearance this coming Thursday.
With that in mind, did you miss our Elon Musk&rsquo;s Road to $1 Trillion Summit last night?
There, we shared the results from months of research into the big Tesla announcement Musk is set to make on Thursday&hellip; and why we believe one tiny AI stock is essential to Tesla&rsquo;s plans.
We&rsquo;re looking at profit potential of 10X in the next year and 50X beyond that.
It&rsquo;s still not too late to get caught up. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2364862">Click here to get started</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Bull Market Still Intact
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Even with the distinct possibility of a short-term sell-off, I&rsquo;d caution you not to bet against this bull market,&rdquo; says Enrique Abeyta &mdash; the newest addition to the Paradigm Press team.
At one time, Enrique managed over $1 billion for a hedge-fund outfit. Like many denizens of the newsletter biz, he&rsquo;s happier writing for an audience of everyday folks like you than he ever was amid the backstabbing, brownnosing culture of Wall Street. Among his bang-on market calls in recent years was amid the COVID crash: Within three days of the bottom in March 2020, he said stocks were a &ldquo;screaming buy.&rdquo;
Back to the present: &ldquo;Going into October, the stock market has been higher for five months in a row,&rdquo; he says in our new Truth &amp; Trends e-letter.
&ldquo;This has happened 28 times since 1954. And in all instances except one, it was higher one year later.&rdquo; (The lone exception was 2018.)
What&rsquo;s more, Enrique shares a chart from the legendary market analyst Ed Yardeni &mdash; depicting every bull market since the 1960s.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6cxsiF0EFROhnLMUK3UuTF/c73a729325dd345773dac9e3b6bffb3d/S_P500Picture1.png" alt="S&amp;P 500" width="540px" />
&ldquo;The current bull run that started in October 2022 has the stock market up a little over 60%,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;Only one of the previous bull markets has been up less than that. In fact, the average bull market in the last six decades has gone up more than 200%. And bull markets have also been getting longer and stronger.&rdquo;
That said, don&rsquo;t discount the likelihood of autumn volatility. &ldquo;In the near term,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;sentiment has gotten quite stretched. It&rsquo;s now back to levels where the stock market has previously corrected.&rdquo;
Possible catalysts for a downdraft include an escalating Middle East conflict &mdash; about which more shortly &mdash; and the proverbial October surprise ahead of Election Day.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> For the moment, though, the stock market is quiet &mdash; the major averages down a half-percent or less to start the week. At 5,727 the S&amp;P 500 sits only 35 points below its record close notched a week ago today.
Gold has sold off below $2,650 and silver has been slammed back below $32. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has rallied to within $250 of the $64,000 mark.
The biggest selling is in the bond market, pushing prices down and yields up. The yield on a 10-year Treasury note is back above 4% for the first time in over two months.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Oil: Geopolitical Risk Still Underpriced
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Crude is up another two bucks to start the week, a barrel of West Texas intermediate now $76.56 &mdash; the highest since late August.
Today is the anniversary of the Hamas attack inside Israel a year ago. The consensus among Israeli politicos a year later was captured last week by Naftali Bennett, who was prime minister for a year in 2021&ndash;22: &ldquo;Israel has now its greatest opportunity in 50 years, to change the face of the Middle East.&rdquo;
Presumably that entails Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. Maybe Iraq and Syria too. Definitely Iran&rsquo;s nuclear program &mdash; even though every year since 2007 U.S. intelligence has said there&rsquo;s no evidence Tehran is working to make a bomb.
Assuming this &ldquo;makeover&rdquo; can be accomplished at all, it can happen only with support and cooperation from Washington &mdash; which would open up U.S. aircraft and bases in the region to attack.
In which case, $76.56 doesn&rsquo;t begin to reflect the risk.
Even the mainstream is alert to the possibility: &ldquo;$100 Oil Could Be the October Surprise No One Wanted,&rdquo; says a CNN headline.
&ldquo;Investors, having been burned by prior geopolitical scares that quickly fizzled, have grown numb to the cascade of crises around the world. This time they&rsquo;re waiting for evidence of actual supply disruptions before bidding up the price of crude oil.&rdquo;
Tehran could, if it wanted, easily shut down the Strait of Hormuz &mdash; only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. Shut it down and large quantities of crude from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Kuwait would be stranded.
&ldquo;In such a scenario, global oil markets would be in uncharted waters,&rdquo; says a report from Citigroup &mdash; &ldquo;with oil prices likely experiencing a sharp and significant spike well past previous record highs.&rdquo;
How high is that? The record remains $147 a barrel shortly before the 2008 financial crisis went critical.
That would be bad enough, but if you adjust for inflation it&rsquo;s $215.
For the moment gasoline prices are under $3 a gallon in 18 states.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Update: Helene, Quartz, Semiconductors
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The secretive Belgian conglomerate that controls the world&rsquo;s sole source of high-purity quartz reports &ldquo;significant progress&rdquo; in recovering from Hurricane Helene.
As we mentioned a week ago today, the world&rsquo;s semiconductor industry is surprisingly dependent on a mine site just north of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The quartz that emerges from there is essential to make silicon wafers for semiconductor manufacturing.
Sibelco, the company that owns the mining complex, acknowledges that the area was &ldquo;hit particularly hard.&rdquo;
However, &ldquo;The initial assessment indicates that our operating facilities in the Spruce Pine region have only sustained minor damage,&rdquo; the company said in a statement issued Friday. &ldquo;Detailed assessments are ongoing.&rdquo;
Not a lot of transparency there. Author Ed Conway, who spotlighted Spruce Pine in his 2023 book Material World, believes it will be several months before the operation is back at pre-Helene capacity.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s quite hard to imagine this won&rsquo;t have at least some impact,&rdquo; he writes at his Substack site.
To be continued&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Middle East Mess
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />On the subject of the Middle East war metastasizing (and potentially driving oil over $100)... a reader responds to the mailbag section in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/what-is-sam-altman-afraid-of">Friday&rsquo;s edition</a>&hellip;
&ldquo;Dave, I do not see how anyone can say that President Trump cannot handle Mideast policy better than Vice President Harris. He has already proven it during his first term, when there was much less trouble in southern Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza and Iran (primarily because he prevented Iran from financing terrorism to the degree we see at present).
&ldquo;Furthermore, I have been an evangelical Christian for 40 years and lived in four different parts of the country. I have yet to find any who believe American foreign policy governs or influences the timetable for the return of Jesus. We do not believe you can play wag the dog with God. You do hear about such people on mainstream media documentaries, but I can tell that a lot of those people and all of their detractors generally have no understanding of the fundamentals of the faith and should be discounted as imposters.
&ldquo;They may have churches, but they are not accurate representations of evangelical Christians and do not have the numbers to be the majority of evangelicals in President Trump's base, much less the majority of his base as a whole.
&ldquo;Thanks for the free flow of opinion.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Far be it from me to get in the middle of the internecine conflicts of someone else&rsquo;s faith. Suffice to say that figures like Pastor John Hagee play an outsized and pernicious role in U.S. foreign policy under Republican administrations.
As for Trump&hellip; he nearly launched airstrikes on Iran in the summer of 2019 because Tehran shot down an American drone. It appears the only reason he didn&rsquo;t follow through is that he turned on Fox News &mdash; and Tucker Carlson talked him down during the 8:00 p.m. EDT hour.
(Incredibly, the Democrats&rsquo; platform this summer slammed Trump for holding his fire on that occasion&hellip;)
But forget 2019: Just last week Trump was egging on Israel to &ldquo;hit&rdquo; Iran&rsquo;s nuclear-energy facilities and &ldquo;worry about the rest later.&rdquo; Which, to reiterate today&rsquo;s Bullet No. 3, cannot happen without U.S. support.
Remind me again how Trump is the &ldquo;antiwar&rdquo; candidate?
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

shutterstock 2318800323

Whether he planned it or not, Musk has made himself the face of a counter-elite in the United States — maybe even more than Trump.

Elon Musk, Counter-Elite

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />What Is Sam Altman Afraid Of?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Sam Altman&rsquo;s OpenAI needs another round of funding. This time, the pitch he&rsquo;s making to prospective investors comes with major strings attached.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5JrUX6i0MOuDSajm9DzyJy/37dce0f3d9a49771e91a2ceb98be9e5f/ft-Headline.png" alt="FT Headline" width="400px" />
&ldquo;OpenAI has asked investors to avoid backing rival start-ups such as Anthropic and Elon Musk&rsquo;s xAI,&rdquo; reports the Financial Times &mdash; &ldquo;as it secures $6.6 billion in new funding and seeks to shut out challengers to its early lead in generative artificial intelligence.&rdquo;
No, this is not standard operating procedure. As the FT explains&hellip;
<blockquote>Venture firms are party to sensitive information about the companies they invest in, and close relationships with one company can make it difficult or contentious to also back a rival.</blockquote>
<blockquote>But exclusivity is rarely insisted on, according to VCs, and many leading firms have spread their bets in certain sectors. Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, for instance, have backed multiple AI start-ups, including both OpenAI and xAI. [Emphasis ours]</blockquote>
The FT&rsquo;s spin is that OpenAI can get away with its demands &ldquo;because investors believe the company could dominate the next wave of AI innovation, which they argue will be as significant a shift in consumer behavior as the internet or mobile.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />That&rsquo;s one possible interpretation. Another is that Altman is using what little leverage he&rsquo;s got with investors before it slips away forever.
If you follow the fates and fortunes of the AI biz, you&rsquo;re probably aware that OpenAI has had no shortage of drama in recent months.
Of course, there was the bizarre boardroom coup late last year &mdash; in which Altman was briefly removed and then reinstated. But this year has seen several of Altman&rsquo;s top lieutenants bolt &mdash; including chief technology officer Mira Murati just last week.
Too, there&rsquo;s Altman&rsquo;s desire to transition OpenAI from a nonprofit to a for-profit model.
It&rsquo;s those plans that prompted Elon Musk &mdash; a co-founder of OpenAI back in 2015 &mdash; to sue OpenAI two months ago. Musk says Altman has committed a &ldquo;deceit of Shakespearean proportions.&rdquo;
But never mind the petty personal dramas &mdash; which by themselves would be enough to give prospective investors pause.
What&rsquo;s really got Altman&rsquo;s boxers in a wad is the revelation Musk is about to unleash six days from now at Tesla&rsquo;s investor day event. Its title is a nod to the science-fiction legend Isaac Asimov&rsquo;s collection of short stories called I, Robot.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6X8ts2wpROEJIQTMXRxrbJ/438e56b9b4d9d5b1c6269a1a4614f9e3/we_robot.jpg" alt="we, robot" width="250px" />
As we said yesterday, Musk is promising, &ldquo;This will be one for the history books&rdquo; when he takes the stage in Burbank, California next Thursday.
And it&rsquo;s the considered opinion of my senior Paradigm Press colleagues that Musk is not blowing smoke.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/47Dew1sWQ9FyvYyOLesXtI/24ee2e2c80a5957e9b6b39b1cea6990f/elon_smoking.png" alt="Elon" width="350px" />
(Yeah, I couldn&rsquo;t resist.)
Here&rsquo;s what my colleagues anticipate: Musk will take the wraps off an entirely new kind of AI. Something none of us has seen before. The most powerful AI ever. A breakthrough on par with the web 30 years ago.
And, by implication, something that will erase all of Sam Altman&rsquo;s advantages in the realm of generative AI. (It might even render the term &ldquo;generative AI&rdquo; obsolete.)
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Jobs: Good News Is Bad News
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The stock market reaction to a blowout jobs report is&hellip; tepid.
It being the first Friday of October, the government is regaling us with the September job numbers. The wonks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics conjured 254,000 new jobs for the month &mdash; way more than any Wall Street economist was expecting. The three-month average works out to a healthy 186,000 &mdash; adequate to keep up with population growth.
And unlike in recent months, there&rsquo;s no divergence between the &ldquo;establishment&rdquo; survey of business owners &mdash; the number the media usually touts &mdash; and the &ldquo;household&rdquo; survey.
If anything, the household survey suggests an even more robust labor market &mdash; job gains totaling 698,000.
The official unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The major U.S. stock indexes popped in reaction to the job numbers&hellip; only to give most of it back as the morning wore on.
At last check, the S&amp;P 500 has inched up less than a tenth of a percent, back above 5,700. If that number holds, it won&rsquo;t surpass last Friday&rsquo;s record weekly close.
The muted reaction makes sense, in its own twisted good-news-is-bad-news way: If the labor market is no longer cooling off, there&rsquo;s a risk the inflation rate might start moving higher. If inflation starts taking off again, that throws a wrench in the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s plans to keep lowering interest rates and funneling more easy money toward Wall Street.
Thus, the betting in the futures market assesses 95% odds that the Fed will cut its benchmark fed funds rate only a quarter-percentage point next month &mdash; not the half point that Wall Street would prefer.
There&rsquo;s not much movement to report in the precious metals either: Gold sits at $2,655 while silver is a tantalizing nickel away from $32. In the crypto space, Bitcoin is likewise quiet at just over $61,000.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />One uncertainty hanging over the markets this week is now resolved: As you&rsquo;re likely aware, the dockworker strike is over less than 72 hours after it began.
Technically the strike is suspended until Jan. 15; the two sides came to an agreement on pay while they&rsquo;ll continue to hammer out everything else, especially automation.
Exactly why the voluble union boss Harold Daggett was so quick to back off his maximalist demands, he&rsquo;s not saying.
As for the other big uncertainty hanging over markets this week, read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />&ldquo;I Think That Would Be a Little&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Update: The price of oil did not leap to $73.71 yesterday because Washington and Tel Aviv are collaborating on potential attacks targeting Iranian oil facilities.
No, the reason oil leapt to $73.71 yesterday was that Joe Biden, asked about the subject, spat out gibberish &mdash; reminding everyone that a dementia patient is still in charge of the &ldquo;rules-based international order&rdquo; for the next 3&frac12; months.
What he mumbled was impossible to capture in print. Here&rsquo;s how the Financial Times tried:
<blockquote>Asked whether the U.S. would support Israel striking Iran&rsquo;s oil facilities, Biden said: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re in discussion of that,&rdquo; although in his truncated comment the U.S. president went on to say: &ldquo;I think that would be a little... anyway.&rdquo;</blockquote>
And The Wall Street Journal:
<blockquote>Asked if he would support Israel attacking Iran&rsquo;s oil facilities, Biden replied, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re discussing that,&rdquo; before adding, &ldquo;I think that would be a little&hellip;&rdquo; and trailing off.</blockquote>
Here&rsquo;s the video. You try making heads or tails of it&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/45LYnUGTfWqZ8G41kL6584/9b828bc67a73fa063415823a8ce4607f/biden_vid.png" alt="Biden Video" />
Combine a president incapable of spitting out a coherent thought on a critical matter of war and peace&hellip; and a media that&rsquo;s too incompetent to press him with a follow-up question&hellip; and you get a dramatic spike in the oil price.
And that spike is holding today, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate up to $74.42. For perspective, it was well under $67 on Tuesday before the latest round of escalations in the Middle East.
This much is certain, as the independent journalist Max Blumenthal tweets: &ldquo;Biden has been threatening to blow up the energy infrastructure of Official Enemies since just before the Nord Stream attacks.&rdquo;
Of course, even addressing these market-moving mumblings opens me up to accusations of &ldquo;bias for Trump&rdquo; &mdash; about which more in today&rsquo;s mailbag.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Texas Tells Big Tech &ldquo;You&rsquo;re On Your Own&rdquo; for Electricity
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The following is one of our periodic reminders that AI threatens to collapse an already-fragile power grid.
The head of the utility regulator in Texas is putting Big Tech on notice: Don&rsquo;t expect to build new data centers near existing power plants in the Lone Star State.
Yesterday, Texas Public Utility Commission chair Thomas Gleeson attended a conference of the Gulf Coast Power Association. According to Bloomberg, &ldquo;AI dominated the discussion.&rdquo;
On the sidelines of that discussion, Gleeson said if data centers are built near existing power plants, it would threaten the integrity of the whole system. Big Tech will have to build its own power plants instead &mdash; at least for the next 12&ndash;15 months.
&ldquo;We can&rsquo;t afford to lose any of our resources off the system at this point, especially given those load-growth projections,&rdquo; Gleeson told Bloomberg.
In other words, Amazon won&rsquo;t be able to strike the kind of deal it did in Pennsylvania &mdash; getting exclusive access to the Susquehanna nuclear power plant. Or the kind Microsoft also got in Pennsylvania, in which the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island will be reopened.
If you&rsquo;re not yet up to speed on the fragility of the power grid and the prodigious new demands that AI will place on it&hellip; <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-monster-that-ate-the-power-grid-ai" target="_blank" rel="noopener">our most recent in-depth treatment was in July</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Politics, Again&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Politics is rearing its ugly head in the mailbag again. I suppose it&rsquo;s inevitable &mdash; even after something as relatively anodyne as <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/teslas-endgame" target="_blank" rel="noopener">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
Under the subject line &ldquo;Bias for Trump,&rdquo; one reader wrote: &ldquo;I like the market news and stock info. I don't come for the politics. Please tone down on the ungrounded political commentary. Thanks!&rdquo;
[I do appreciate the friendly exclamation point&hellip;]
But someone else &mdash; perhaps in response to yesterday&rsquo;s mailbag section? &mdash; wasn&rsquo;t so sure about the &ldquo;bias.&rdquo; As he wrote, &ldquo;Hmmm&hellip; Don&rsquo;t you prefer Trump over Harris&hellip;?&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />And then there was one of our regulars, who it&rsquo;s fair to say leans left&hellip;
&ldquo;Quite surprised you published the quote from Ryan Grim, who I do not know. He is either a simpleton, or a writer with a distinct political agenda. To break down the Middle East conflict and the U.S. role in it into only two distinct possibilities is pure deception. Even more perplexing is the reason that you published it without question. Your political agenda to knock down the Biden/Harris administration, truth be damned, is not lost on your readership. We are not all quite as dumb as you think we are.
&ldquo;I suppose this might be the time to ask you the defining question that J.D. Vance had such a difficult time with. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election, yes or no? If you answer that you are looking to the future, we know where you stand. At the risk of upsetting a large conservative portion of your readership, I dare you to answer with a yes or no, no qualifiers! Good luck.
&ldquo;Don't fret too much, however: Many of us enjoy the newsletter enough regardless that we are willing to overlook any political opinions, so perhaps others will feel the same and stay with you.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />This is the problem I&rsquo;ve faced all year: I say something critical about one candidate, and people jump to the conclusion I&rsquo;m in the tank for the other. Such is the present polarized atmosphere.
The problem is made worse by the fact that Trump is not currently exercising power and Joe Biden is. Biden (or unknown others acting in his name) issues market-moving and world-changing orders; it&rsquo;s inevitable I&rsquo;d subject him to more scrutiny at this time.
With that precis, let&rsquo;s take the third reader&rsquo;s concerns item by item.
First, Ryan Grim is one of the most vital independent journalists on the scene today. He recently co-founded Drop Site News after spending seven years at The Intercept and eight years before that at HuffPost. (Not exactly right-wing outlets, either of those&hellip;)
To be clear, I have less than zero confidence that Trump can &ldquo;manage&rdquo; U.S. affairs in the Middle East any better than Biden/Harris. If anything, he&rsquo;s even more likely to gin up a disastrous war in the region to placate his most important donor (Miriam Adelson, widow of the pro-Israel casino magnate Sheldon Adelson) and his base of end-times evangelicals who think U.S. foreign policy should be an instrument to hasten the return of Jesus.
The 2020 election? To the extent I&rsquo;ve looked into it, I&rsquo;m not persuaded Trump won &mdash; and I mocked the more ludicrous claims of Sidney Powell et al. in real-time (<a href="https://5minforecast.com/2020/11/20/rigged/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a> and <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2020/11/23/mainlining-hopium/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>). At the same time, it&rsquo;s risible to suggest that what happened on Jan. 6, 2021 was an &ldquo;insurrection.&rdquo;
Of course, that&rsquo;s a position that pleases no one on either side of the divide. But reality doesn&rsquo;t care about your tribal loyalties.
In any event, I thank the third reader for his polite engagement and continued readership. As always, we have only two aims here each day &mdash; 1) that you learn at least one interesting thing you didn&rsquo;t know before and 2) that you decide to come back the next day.
At least for this one critic, it seems we succeed?

shutterstock 2389974117

Sam Altman’s OpenAI needs another round of funding. This time, the pitch he’s making to prospective investors comes with major strings attached.

What Is Sam Altman Afraid Of? 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Tesla&rsquo;s Numbers Are a Nothingburger
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> In a case of Mr. Market asking, &ldquo;So what have you done for me lately?&rdquo;... shares of Tesla took a 3.5% dump yesterday. (And they&rsquo;re down another 2% today).
TSLA reported its quarterly vehicles-delivered numbers. They were in line with the expectations of Wall Street analysts &mdash; up 6.4% from a year ago.
So what&rsquo;s the problem? Well, the total for the first nine months of 2024 is still behind last year&rsquo;s pace. If the company is going to beat 2023&rsquo;s total, it&rsquo;s going to have to step on the gas &mdash; er, I guess, the accelerator.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> What are we to make of Tesla here in late 2024, the share price still well off its 2021 peak?
Your editor has been of many minds about this company over the years, informed by colleagues both past and present who have conflicting &mdash; and vigorous &mdash; opinions.
One of them first recommended Tesla to his readers in 2010, about six months after it went public. The reaction was largely skeptical, given a readership well aware of Tesla&rsquo;s reliance on generous government subsidies &mdash; including the tax breaks for buyers of electric cars. &ldquo;Never got so many letters telling us how dumb we were,&rdquo; this individual recalled.
But they didn&rsquo;t mind riding TSLA to 1,005% gains by mid-2016.
All along the way, though, skeptical colleagues said something didn&rsquo;t add up.
They didn&rsquo;t necessarily agree with the hard-core &ldquo;Tesla shorts&rdquo; who asserted Elon Musk is a fraud. But they also said it made zero sense to label Tesla a &ldquo;tech company&rdquo; &mdash; lumped in with Google and Facebook &mdash; when Tesla operates in the very capital-intensive business of building cars.
Thus, they argued, it made even less sense that Tesla&rsquo;s market cap &mdash; currently just under $800 billion &mdash; nearly equals the rest of the top 10 global automakers combined.
How can the story end, they ask, other than in tears?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The counter I&rsquo;ve heard to that argument &mdash; and the only one that rings true for me &mdash; is this: Tesla isn&rsquo;t actually an EV company and it&rsquo;s not trying to compete in the same realm with Toyota and GM.
Rather, Elon Musk launched an automaker with a long-term plan for total domination in a specialized field of AI &mdash; an entirely new kind of AI, potentially the most powerful AI humanity has ever seen.
A former colleague likens Musk&rsquo;s aims to those of Amazon in the 1990s &mdash; selling books with a long-term plan for total domination in the field of online retail.
Makes sense. The knock on Tesla for years was that it didn&rsquo;t make a profit. But still another old friend would remind me that was the knock on Amazon during AMZN&rsquo;s peak growth years. Amazon could have easily achieved a cushy 10% profit margin during that time if not for Jeff Bezos&rsquo; relentless expansion into new lines of business.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> With all of that as prologue, Elon Musk is set to make an earth-shaking announcement one week from today &mdash; Thursday Oct. 10. &ldquo;This will be one for the history books,&rdquo; he says.
And after a careful assessment of his claims, several of my current colleagues &mdash; who rarely agree on anything &mdash; concur that this is one time Musk absolutely is not blowing smoke.
Yes, Tesla shares should perform well on the heels of this announcement &mdash; certainly well enough to make the sell-off yesterday and today a footnote in the company&rsquo;s history.
But the really big money &mdash; the kind of money that could dramatically alter your retirement plans for the better &mdash; will come from a tiny AI company that my colleagues believe holds the key to Musk&rsquo;s plans.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Dockworker Strike: Election Wild Card
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> To the markets &mdash; where the stupid election looms large over both of the economic wild cards dominating the week&rsquo;s news.
&ldquo;It is now more likely we are looking at weeks rather than days as a duration for this conflict,&rdquo; Vespucci Maritime CEO Lars Jensen says of the port strike on the East and Gulf Coasts.
That&rsquo;s because for the moment, the International Longshoremen&rsquo;s Association has the tacit support of both presidential candidates.
&ldquo;American workers should be able to negotiate for better wages, especially since the shipping companies are mostly foreign flag vessels,&rdquo; says Donald Trump.
Presumably speaking on behalf of the Kamala Harris campaign, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre promises that Joe Biden will not invoke the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 &mdash; ordering the 45,000 strikers back to work for an 80-day &ldquo;cooling off period.&rdquo;
Taft-Hartley has long been anathema to organized labor; the last time a president invoked it was Dubya Bush during a West Coast dockworker strike in 2002.
With at least wink-and-a-nod support from both presidential candidates, the ILA is unlikely to budge in its talks with the U.S. Maritime Alliance.
And even if everyday consumers aren&rsquo;t following every detail of the back-and-forth, their collective spidey-sense is making for epic-long checkout lines at Costco&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1eqV28lqKxUFlsl78TGv0M/d6f20d0ef49f0251b77b36a768970f53/FMF-Issue-10-03-24_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Colleague Chris Cimorelli of our Microcap Millionaire service points out that all of this comes at a potentially dicey time for the Democrats and organized labor; this year the Teamsters union opted to withhold an endorsement for president for the first time since 1996.
And we&rsquo;ll add this: Polling data suggests that private-sector unionized workers are leaning Republican to a degree they never have before. Not that there are many of them left: While unionized workers made up over 35% of the private-sector workforce in the mid-1950s, today it&rsquo;s closer to 7%.
(The political leanings of government union workers? Still overwhelmingly Democratic&hellip;)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Whether it&rsquo;s jitters about the strike and supply chains&hellip; or jitters about the Middle East (more about that in Bullet No. 3)... or another factor entirely&hellip; something is keeping a lid on the stock market this week.
The S&amp;P 500 is down about a third of a percent on the day. At 5,690 it&rsquo;s also down about 1% from its record close on Monday.
A more decisive move &mdash; up or down &mdash; could come tomorrow with the release of the September jobs numbers.
Gold is hanging tough at $2,649 &mdash; silver likewise at $31.76. The precious metals&rsquo; resilience this week is notable given a rally in the U.S. dollar relative to other major currencies; under ordinary circumstances, a rising dollar would crush gold and silver.
The price of platinum, meanwhile, has sunk below $1,000 &mdash; a level that&rsquo;s been overhead resistance since June. We bring up platinum this morning because a little over a year after Costco started selling 1-ounce gold bars, it&rsquo;s adding 1-ounce platinum bars to the lineup.
Whether they come from Costco or someone else, platinum might be a bargain right now. At times its dollar price has equaled that of gold; until about 2008, it was pricier than gold. But today gold sells for 2.6 times the price of platinum. If platinum starts playing catch-up, look out.
Bitcoin keeps drifting down, now in danger of cracking below $60,000&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Oil&hellip; and More Election Uncertainty
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The ever-louder war drums in the Middle East have pushed a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude past $73 &mdash; the highest in nearly a month, up from $67.50 Tuesday morning.
The Axios news site reports that Israel is planning to launch a &ldquo;significant retaliation&rdquo; attack on Iran. That&rsquo;s according to anonymous Israeli sources who acknowledge such a gambit could lead to a full-blown regional war directly involving the United States.
(Brings to mind the old joke about Let&rsquo;s you and him fight!)
After Iran lobbed about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, "There will be severe consequences for this Iranian attack and we will work with Israel to make sure that is the case."
(Hello? How about working with Congress as the Constitution requires?)
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6X9shdHWB6hOcUr3EalzKA/0d96c1509946a96a9826842e719dedf7/FMF-Issue-10-03-24_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Anyway, among the targets the Israelis have in mind are oil production sites inside Iran. &ldquo;While Israel is going to respond on its own,&rdquo; says Axios, &ldquo;it wants to coordinate its plans with the U.S. because of the strategic implications of the situation.&rdquo;
Hmmm&hellip; From where we sit, it&rsquo;s hard to imagine Team Biden egging on Israel&rsquo;s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to start bombing Iranian oil facilities barely a month before Election Day; the resulting higher gasoline prices would be a major gift to Trump, no?
On the other hand, it&rsquo;s very easy to imagine Netanyahu going ahead with it anyway, since it&rsquo;s an open secret he prefers Trump over Harris. Just sayin&rsquo;.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />There&rsquo;s no disaster on Earth so bad that pettifogging bureaucrats can&rsquo;t make it worse &mdash; as we&rsquo;re learning in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
&ldquo;An experienced helicopter pilot's mission to rescue flood victims was abruptly halted after he was threatened with arrest,&rdquo; says a story at Firehouse &mdash; a website devoted to news about firefighters and EMTs.
&ldquo;Hearing about stranded people frantically begging for help, he decided to fly his own helicopter to assist. He knew it was going to be the only way out for many.&rdquo;
Pilot and volunteer firefighter Jordan Seidhom checked for restrictions in the airspace around Lake Lure &mdash; one of the worst-hit areas. There were none.
On Saturday, he and his son/co-pilot rescued four people from Lake Lure. They reached a stranded couple on Sunday as well. Because the chopper landed on an unstable driveway, they wanted to keep the weight down &mdash; so Seidhom took the woman first, promising to come back for the man later. Upon landing, Seidhom was greeted by grateful fire and search personnel. "One guy gave me the radio frequencies so we could communicate," Seidhom tells Firehouse.
Then the fire chief &mdash; or maybe assistant chief, Seidhom isn&rsquo;t sure &mdash; shows up.
"He told me if I didn't leave the area immediately, I'd be arrested. I told him my background, but he insisted I leave, saying I was interfering with his operation."
Lo and behold, a temporary flight restriction went up over Lake Lure about a half-hour after the confrontation.
Seidhom and his son had to head home to South Carolina. The man was left stranded, separated from his wife.
The flight restriction was lifted on Monday and Seidhom went back to work &mdash; this time as part of the Carolina Emergency Response Team. No comment from anyone in officialdom in Lake Lure.
But Seidhom&rsquo;s still miffed: &ldquo;I can only imagine what the people were thinking,&rdquo; he tells the New York Post. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been stranded for 24, 36 hours. No way to speak with anyone. You don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s going on and you see a lifeline fly over and they keep going. I can only imagine what they were thinking.&rdquo;
Sheesh&hellip; The level of dysfunction here &mdash; and with a few other things in North Carolina &mdash; has a certain Maui/East Palestine vibe to it.
Then again, maybe it&rsquo;s just a Katrina redux?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: From JFK to Jeffrey Epstein
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Great piece of work&hellip; keep it up,&rdquo; says the first of many responses to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/no-transparency-no-accountability">Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;Very good research!&rdquo; says another. &ldquo;Sickeningly insightful. Thanks for sharing it.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Very thought provoking 5 Bullets,&rdquo; says a third.
&ldquo;It is interesting that some historians point out the negative writings about a country's government and culture precede the destruction and disappearance of the country/empire.
&ldquo;The negative writings of Roman authors and historians preceded the fall of Rome. They could see its future demise in plain sight.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;I really enjoyed Tuesday&rsquo;s rant about JFK and Epstein and COVID Fauci,&rdquo; says a fourth.
&ldquo;Thank you for stirring the conspiracy pot and making me more paranoid than I was. And giving credence to those I blew off as CTs. And I do want to hear the unabridged Warren Commission details.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> One more: &ldquo;In fairness, in this political season, could you opine on Kamala's answers concerning the full release of the JFK and Epstein files, as well as Trump's?&rdquo;
Dave responds: Given the increasing uselessness of Google and Google News in recent years, I posted a query to the Perplexity AI engine. It came up empty.
&ldquo;Based on the search results provided,&rdquo; it said, &ldquo;there is no indication that Kamala Harris has made any statements on the campaign trail about opening up the remaining redacted JFK assassination records.&rdquo; Ditto for any Epstein records.
As for &ldquo;conspiracy theories&rdquo;... I took pains on Tuesday to avoid any contested facts. My critique comes back to the old line about how &ldquo;it&rsquo;s not the conspiracy, it&rsquo;s the cover-up.&rdquo; Or in the case of COVID measures, the gaslighting.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Meanwhile, I enjoy &ldquo;fall of Rome&rdquo; analogies as much as anyone. The problem is where do you place America today relative to the timeline of Rome? 
Is it the end of the republic in the first century BCE &mdash; the populares fed up with the corrupt and degenerate optimates that presumed to rule over them? (And who, then, would be the Caesar figure that emerges now?)
Is it an already-declining empire&rsquo;s power struggle reminiscent of the Year of the Five Emperors (193)?
Are we about to be cursed with desperate control freaks and power-trippers like Diocletian and Constantine (turn of the fourth century)?
Or is it really the end of the Western empire?
Even if it were the last of those possibilities, how would we know?
Because as someone once quipped &mdash; it might have been newsletter legend Doug Casey &mdash; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not as if everyone just woke up one day in A.D. 476 and said, &lsquo;Holy s***, we&rsquo;re in the Dark Ages now!&rsquo;&rdquo;

awn-hero-img-04-19-24 NEW YORK, USA, 2. OCTOBER 2022: Elon Musk businessman silhouette on Tesla presentation, Logo of company on red background

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TSLA reported its quarterly vehicles-delivered numbers. They were in line with the expectations of Wall Street analysts. So what’s the problem?

Tesla’s Endgame

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />America&rsquo;s Next Move
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Your editor today attended Paradigm&rsquo;s &ldquo;America's Next Move&rdquo; conference held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Baltimore on Tuesday. 
Despite the gloomy weather, Paradigm luminaries gathered on one stage to tease out the latest trends in technology, biotech, crypto and more.
With around 400 attendees soaking up the insights, the atmosphere buzzed with excitement over topics ranging from AI-driven drug discovery to innovative income strategies.
In case you&rsquo;re wondering, we've decided against releasing full recordings of the event. The conference's success with our 400 attendees has led us to maintain an air of exclusivity.
But for those who couldn't attend, don't be discouraged. We're exploring the possibility of releasing select talks in bite-sized video segments throughout the remainder of the year.
And we still have numerous highlights from the conference to discuss today&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Paradigm&rsquo;s iconoclast investor James Altucher kicked off the event with compelling stories from his eight years of professional day trading &mdash; as well as his time living in one of the few residential buildings on Wall Street during the 2009 financial crisis.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2lnQ6uJZEQQM20CXGbRfZe/da074018745c29d659c12c9d4298fd0a/image001.jpg" alt="James at the Conference" />
He described observing the gloomy faces of traders heading into the New York Stock Exchange each morning. In an effort to raise their spirits (heh, and their risk tolerance), he even handed out M&amp;Ms and Hershey&rsquo;s bars to these weary traders.
Meanwhile, because of his proximity to CNBC&rsquo;s studio near the NYSE, James was a regular guest. But his brand of optimism eventually made him persona non grata. James&rsquo; mother even called to advise him not to smile too much on TV!
Of course, Altucher&rsquo;s journey from hedge fund manager&hellip; to day trader&hellip; to crypto evangelist has been anything but conventional. More on that later&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />AI's Game-Changing Role
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Next up, our chief technology analyst Ray Blanco painted a vivid picture of how AI is revolutionizing drug discovery and development. 
Ray highlighted the risky business of getting a new drug to market &mdash; costing around $2.3 billion per drug and often taking over a decade. But using AI could help boost success rates while cutting costs by an impressive 90%.
He even joked we might be looking at &ldquo;Star Trek-level health care&rdquo; in the near future where advancements in AI, personalized medicine, gene editing and immunotherapy could help extend human life spans to an average 120 years.
With AI's ability to streamline processes and identify promising drug candidates, Ray&rsquo;s optimism &mdash; like Altucher&rsquo;s &mdash; was infectious.
And it&rsquo;s in this context that Ray mentioned a biotech company that specializes in developing computational software for drug discovery. (Out of respect for attendees who paid for the experience yesterday, we&rsquo;re withholding most names of stocks.)
After Ray&rsquo;s turn at the podium&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Paradigm&rsquo;s retirement-and-income specialist Zach Scheidt took center stage, focusing on income-generating strategies amid changing market conditions. 
He pointed out that as interest rates decline, dividend stocks are likely to become more appealing to investors seeking safer havens for their money.
&ldquo;Expect money to move out of high-yield accounts and into high-quality, dividend-paying stocks,&rdquo; he advised.
And Zach highlighted two &ldquo;boring&rdquo; companies that stand to benefit from growing dividends as well as AI&rsquo;s demand for electricity and data centers.
Both companies are well-positioned in this evolving landscape, providing essential infrastructure for AI development and data management.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Crypto, AI and Main Street
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />James Altucher and crypto expert Chris Campbell focused on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence &mdash; particularly in light of the upcoming 2024 election.
James expressed confidence in the long-term prospects of cryptocurrencies, regardless of the election&rsquo;s outcome, drawing parallels between early skepticism toward the internet and current attitudes about crypto, suggesting that widespread adoption is inevitable.
&ldquo;In the long run, it doesn&rsquo;t matter who wins the presidency &mdash; crypto will go up,&rdquo; James says.
The discussion also touched on some practical applications of blockchain technology &mdash; for instance, projects like OriginTrail (TRAC) for supply-chain management and AMP for secure payments.
He also discussed the concept of tokenization, explaining how it could revolutionize asset ownership and investment opportunities.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Meanwhile, Chris&rsquo; presentation highlighted the intersection of crypto, AI and Main Street.
And leave it to Chris to introduce the word &ldquo;enantiodromia&rdquo; which suggests that as the world becomes more global, there's a countertrend toward localization. Chris would argue that both crypto and AI, often seen as global technologies, are fundamentally local in nature.
The presentation further emphasized the value of local public data, which Campbell sees as underutilized.
He underscored opportunities in local contexts such as community-focused news and weather data collection.
Chris also discussed the potential of open-source hardware and AI-driven 3D printing to solve local problems. In the realm of food production, for example, he noted how AI and robotics could significantly increase yield while reducing water usage.
Overall, Chris expressed optimism about the future in light of the potential for local, AI-driven solutions to global problems. And he concluded with a mention of a cryptocurrency that allows users to control their own data.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Next &ldquo;Mag 7&rdquo; Stocks?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />A panel discussion had Paradigm experts and a few behind-the-scenes contributors weighing in: predictions for the next wave of dominant technology stocks &mdash; akin to today&rsquo;s &ldquo;Magnificent 7.&rdquo; 
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6MxRmzdcBD9U7IykhWy9nc/7728b0bedaffd73da613f27952e8562b/image002.jpg" alt="Panel Discussion" />
Picks included&hellip;
Again, we&rsquo;re withholding specific names today, but a colleague tells me this panel discussion might be among the first video segments released. Stay tuned!
That said, the conversation sparked lively debate &mdash; and some good-natured ribbing &mdash; about which companies truly deserve a spot on this coveted list.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Playing 10-Dimensional Chess
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />At &ldquo;America's Next Move,&rdquo; attendees were treated to a unique chess exhibition featuring James Altucher. 
Paradigm event organizers set up 10 chess tables in a line, and James took on all challengers simultaneously.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/16tCEGNqTOvAjNq4RKclVz/a10cb1214d9deca64b97515f658f20fd/James_chess.png" alt="James playing chess" />
Courtesy: Rick Barnard-Singer
As James moved from table to table, the room was filled with palpable tension. While there was no play-by-play commentary, a focused silence permeated the air, broken only by the soft sounds of chess pieces being moved.
The matches progressed at varying paces; when a game concluded, it was signaled by a brief round of applause from onlookers.
The entire exhibition lasted just over two hours. And in an impressive display of skill and mental agility, James emerged victorious in nine of the 10 matches.
The tenth game? While not technically a loss, James conceded as he anticipated inevitable defeat.
Each plucky contestant got to keep the chess set. Which James happily signed&hellip;
Take care, reader! We&rsquo;ll be back with another round of 5 Bullets tomorrow.
P.S. The markets today, you ask?
Let&rsquo;s put it this way: The contrast yesterday was striking &mdash; reminiscent of Dave&rsquo;s reflections <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-year-of-ai" target="_blank" rel="noopener">at the start of the year</a> about the vibe in 1939-40. War was raging in Europe and the Depression wasn&rsquo;t over at home. But tens of millions flocked to the New York World&rsquo;s Fair to see the latest and greatest in technology, eager to explore the possibilities for human progress and betterment.
Yesterday inside a hotel ballroom we had a group of 400 subscribers jazzed about the possibilities in AI, crypto and small companies that could set the world on its ear.
Outside the ballroom, the dockworkers went on strike, an event that threatens to snarl supply chains worse than during the pandemic. And the Middle East conflict escalated to startling new heights that could threaten global oil flows.
The market impact has been palpable &mdash; a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude soaring from under $67 yesterday to over $72 today.
By the same token, the stock market took a hit, the S&amp;P 500 tumbling nearly 1% yesterday and treading water today at 5,712.
Gold is holding the line on $2,650 and silver is back within a dime of $32. Bitcoin is backsliding, under $62,000.
Yes, the world is a rough place right now. But it was a rough place 85 years ago in 1939 &mdash; and yet, people oohed and aahed at the first public demo of television. The technology changed the world and minted vast new fortunes.

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Your editor today attended Paradigm’s “America's Next Move” conference held in Baltimore on Tuesday. We have numerous highlights to discuss today…

America’s Next Move (Highlights)

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When Americans’ trust in “the system” first began to erode

No Transparency, No Accountability

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Countdown to Supply-Chain Snags
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Sure, now the mainstream has figured out a huge port strike is about to begin&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/daA9Hawiq57sxBTN1I8HZ/be6608d6c657513c8c801471d52b6532/usa_today_headline_port_workers.png" alt="USA Today Headline" />
We started warning you back on June 11. The International Longshoremen&rsquo;s Association was at odds with the U.S. Maritime Alliance &mdash; operators of the major ports on the East Coast and Gulf Coast.
And they&rsquo;re still at odds. The current union contract expires tonight at midnight. As we said more than once last week, do not expect a Plast-minute agreement. Forty-five thousand dockworkers will walk.
If you&rsquo;re interested in the details of the dispute &mdash; the two sides are hung up on pay and the use of robotics &mdash; you can now read about that anywhere.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />As always, our aim here is to see where the puck is going, not where it is.
&ldquo;After two days, we will feel nothing from a strike,&rdquo; says Byron King &mdash; Paradigm&rsquo;s resident renaissance man. Having cut his teeth in the oil business as a geologist, and as a Navy flight officer with three decades of service&hellip; he knows a thing or two about logistics and the process of moving things from Point A to Point B.
The real trouble comes not after two days, but after two weeks: &ldquo;After two weeks, we'll see some empty space on store shelves.&rdquo; And look for the prices of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to rise: &ldquo;The strike will affect imports of heavy crude to blend at refineries.&rdquo;
After three weeks, expect &ldquo;significant factory shutdowns as parts are not flowing. Remember how entire auto plants shut down during COVID for lack of a few chips for circuit boards? Or how vehicles were parked in fields because there were no chips for key fobs?
&ldquo;Shippers are already re-routing cargoes to the West Coast &mdash; unload in California to ship east to Virginia, for example.&rdquo; Yes, it&rsquo;s doable &mdash; but it&rsquo;s more time, more expense, more fuel burn.
The losers in all of this will be the companies most dependent on shipping through the East and Gulf Coasts: According to figures from the trade data firm ImportGenius, Walmart tops the list, followed by Ikea and Samsung.
The winners will be the railroads and long-haul truckers with more demand for their services.
Well, up to a point: Hurricane Helene has done significant damage to Interstate 40 at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line &mdash; disrupting a crucial east-west corridor.
Speaking of Helene&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />And What About the Semiconductors?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Apart from the human toll and the economic devastation left by Hurricane Helene&hellip; there&rsquo;s the not-small factor of a hit to global semiconductor manufacturing.
First, rewind to this headline from six months ago in the daily newspaper serving Raleigh, North Carolina&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3CE1Im3oJgHZMjITIOpo4B/538de9752a004758d3af04ff954892fb/news_observer_headline_open_source.png" alt="News Observer Headline" width="400px" />
The town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina &mdash; population 2,175 &mdash; sits just south of a mining complex that&rsquo;s the world&rsquo;s sole source of high-purity quartz used in the production of silicon wafers.
&ldquo;It is rare, unheard of almost, for a single site to control the global supply of a crucial material,&rdquo; writes Ed Conway in his 2023 book Material World. &ldquo;Yet if you want to get high-purity quartz &mdash; the kind you need to make those crucibles without which you can&rsquo;t make silicon wafers &mdash; it has to come from Spruce Pine.&rdquo;
Chalk it up to a geological anomaly: Spruce Pine&rsquo;s mineral deposits &ldquo;formed 380 million years ago during the collision of Africa and North America,&rdquo; wrote Erika Morphy at TechSpot earlier this year. &ldquo;The intense heat and lack of water during their formation created quartz rock of unparalleled purity.
&ldquo;These rocks are extracted from the ground and turned into quartz gravel, which is then processed into a fine sand. The silicon is separated from other minerals and then goes through a final milling. The final product is a powder that is shipped to refineries.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Spruce Pine got more than two feet of rain from Tuesday through Saturday. 
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4UJti9QPlk1hMovpv9sGtg/0a20cb12ce21438763292502e6924709/hurricane_nc_headline.png" alt="Fossil Locator" />
Exactly what the impact is on quartz production, we don&rsquo;t know. The mine is owned by Sibelco, a privately held Belgian firm. It is, to say the least, averse to publicity.
From Conway&rsquo;s book: &ldquo;When contractors from other companies are brought in for repairs [at the plant] they are literally blindfolded and marched into the factory up to the machine they need to fix.&rdquo;
[For its part, Sibelco denies such secrecy.]
A few months ago, a Wharton professor named Ethan Mollick speculated that if the mines were to permanently halt operations for some reason, "it would likely [be] a few years of major disruption while techniques to generate alternatives were scaled up. But the disruption would be pretty catastrophic."
A permanent halt seems unlikely. But how temporary will &ldquo;temporary&rdquo; prove to be? We shall see&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Not as Bad as First Thought
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />One of the major indicators that was screaming &ldquo;incoming recession&rdquo; has just been erased.
On Thursday, Paradigm macro maven Jim Rickards spotlighted for us the divergence between the widely reported economic measure of gross domestic product (GDP) and the less-followed measure of gross domestic income (GDI).
&ldquo;GDP is supposed to be a near-mirror image of GDI (gross domestic income),&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but there&rsquo;s been a wide divergence in recent quarters. GDI is growing much more slowly and may soon be declining slightly. In the past, when GDP and GDI diverge, GDI tends to be more accurate and GDP plunges quickly to re-converge with GDI.&rdquo;
Like the GDP figures, past GDI releases are subject to revisions based on new incoming data.
Lo and behold, the Commerce Department issued some upward revisions late last week. First-quarter GDI growth was revised from an annualized 1.3% to 3.0%. And second-quarter GDI growth was revised from an annualized 1.3% to 3.4%.
Your personal economic circumstances might be subpar. Your adult kids might be struggling to afford a house. Your neighbors might have had their hours cut back.
But if incomes in the aggregate are still holding up (and they are)&hellip; if relatively few people are filing first-time unemployment claims (that&rsquo;s also the case)... and if oil prices sit near three-year lows (they do)...
&hellip; then it&rsquo;s hard to say a &ldquo;recession&rdquo; is nigh &mdash; at least as economists conventionally describe it. Again, YMMV.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Speaking of the oil price, you&rsquo;d never guess a widespread war is about to break out in the Middle East.
A barrel of West Texas Intermediate begins the week up a mere 15 cents at $68.33 even though Israel is about to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon at the same time it&rsquo;s expanding an air war against the Houthis of Yemen.
Apparently no amount of geopolitical tension will move the oil price until the Straits of Hormuz are closed or a missile strikes an American warship.
Meanwhile, not much excitement in the major U.S. stock indexes. Both the S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq have barely budged from last Friday&rsquo;s close &mdash; which in the case of the S&amp;P was a record weekly close.
Precious metals are still reeling after their take-down on Friday. But gold continues to hold the line on $2,600 and silver on $31, so it&rsquo;s not all bad. Bitcoin, however, has slipped under the $65,000 floor that held for much of last week.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />For the record: California Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed the AI-regulation bill <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/intels-road-map-to-trillion-dollar-status/#3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">we mentioned</a> here last month.
In theory, there might be enough momentum for an override, but in practice there&rsquo;s little history of the California legislature spurning the governor&rsquo;s wishes. The last time it happened was during Jerry Brown&rsquo;s first stint as governor over 40 years ago.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Kristofferson&rsquo;s Future Financial Shock
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />We wouldn&rsquo;t ordinarily note the passing of Kris Kristofferson in these virtual pages &mdash; except for his appearance in a financial thriller that might serve as a glimpse into the future.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2ypRdgz272Za9GkYwiFc4z/2290a299bc88b5f0ee5ec8f2234be68b/rollover_movie_poster.png" alt="Rollover" width="257px" />
The print ad oversells the sex in the movie, which was minimal (Image from MovieGoods)
Rollover, starring Kristofferson and Jane Fonda, came out in 1981. It wasn&rsquo;t a particularly good movie, and it was a box-office bomb. But its fictional backdrop had a foundation in reality &mdash; Arab financiers panicking out of the U.S. dollar, triggering a financial collapse.
We&rsquo;ve recounted the history before, but in brief: When the Iran hostage crisis broke out in November 1979 and Jimmy Carter froze Iranian assets, many wealthy people around the world &mdash; particularly in the Middle East &mdash; began to wonder if they might be next in line. The panic accelerated the following month when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and Carter responded with a grain embargo.
Hot money flooded out of the dollar and into Swiss francs, West German marks and especially gold. Gold&rsquo;s price in dollars more than doubled in four months to a record $800 in January 1980.
We&rsquo;ve seen a similar panic since early 2022, albeit in slow motion &mdash; the de-dollarization movement among the BRICS countries and the Global South in general, after Russia invaded Ukraine and Joe Biden froze the assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank.
Worldwide, central bank purchases of gold set a record in 2022 &mdash; and the buying has continued at a furious pace in 2023&ndash;24. Not coincidentally, the dollar price of gold has risen from barely $1,800 at the time of the Russian invasion to over $2,600 now &mdash; up 44% in a little over 2&frac12; years.
Anyway, you might want to watch Rollover sometime as a preview of coming attractions. It&rsquo;s on Prime Video and Apple TV.
➢ Personally, I also enjoyed Kristofferson in Convoy &mdash; a Sam Peckinpah vehicle dripping with the sort of 1970s contempt for authority you just don&rsquo;t see anymore. Told by a corrupt sheriff (Ernest Borgnine) that &ldquo;I am the law &mdash; don&rsquo;t you understand, I represent the law,&rdquo; Kristofferson&rsquo;s trucker character responds, &ldquo;Well, piss on you and piss on your law.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: More Property Taxes!
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;In response to my fellow Texan, I see that like most Texans, he doesn't understand how property taxes actually work,&rdquo; a reader writes after last <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/lies-statistics-and-recession" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Thursday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
[Once more unto the breach we go!]
&ldquo;When I wrote, I said I was giving the short answer. Here's the longer version.
&ldquo;Property taxes are not progressive. Within a county appraisal district, you will pay the same property tax rate whether your home value is $50,000 or $5 million. That is unlike federal income taxes where higher incomes have a higher tax rate.
&ldquo;The amount of tax you pay is not primarily determined by your appraised value. It is determined by the tax rate your taxing authorities set. For example, a school system creates a budget for the next year and sets a tax rate based on the appraised value and how much is needed to meet the budget. I live in an area where home values have gone up considerably, but I've seen my tax rate lowered twice in the last 12 years because our local taxing authorities are mostly responsible people. Based on data from Tax-Rates.org, I pay 30% less in taxes than Austin (Travis County) which is 30 miles north of me. (See the interactive map at Tax-Rates.org.)
&ldquo;In Texas, if you have the ability and desire to move, you can greatly lower your taxes. I'm retired now, but I've worked remotely for many years. I tried to get my wife to move to Pecos County. It would have cut our taxes 85%. A person living in Travis County (Austin) could cut their taxes 50% by moving next door to Lee County. In general, the population-dense areas of the state will always have higher taxes. That is because they have more irresponsible taxing authorities and a population that demands more services like elaborate sports complexes.
&ldquo;Finally, the state does limit the taxing authorities on the homesteads of people over 65. My property value has doubled since 2014, but my taxes have not come close to doubling, even without the over 65 exemption. Two years ago the state made a change to the homestead value exemption. Last year, my tax bill went from $8.2K to $5.7K. I'm a happy camper. :-)&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Local tax officials who seek to pad their budgets with higher revenues from rising property values are basically levying a windfall profits tax,&rdquo; writes another. &ldquo;Honest and competent local officials, such as where I live in rural Idaho, compensate for rising property assessments by lowering millage rates.
&ldquo;My property taxes have gone down in three of the last four years because the rising assessments have been enough to cover the county's basic budget plus growth from new arrivals, and millage rates have been reduced accordingly.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Fascinating. If only there were a way to readily quantify and distribute that sort of information for people relocating. It&rsquo;d be a lot more illuminating than the annual tax payment that you see on property listings at Zillow or Realtor.com!

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Sure, now the mainstream has figured out a huge port strike is about to begin…

COVID Redux

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The BRICS Cement Their Currency Agenda
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The BRICS leaders' summit in Kazan, Russia &mdash; scheduled for Oct. 22&ndash;24 &mdash; is expected to make a significant announcement regarding its BRICS&rsquo; currency plan.
This event has been overshadowed by other geopolitical events (i.e. Ukraine, Israel, Lebanon, etc.). But according to our macroeconomics authority Jim Rickards, it could have far-reaching consequences for the U.S. dollar.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2vOSFU2RH7zRcWwmTS3tkl/83f921088bc9b9410c6e1e19e8249cce/majeed_ksa_tweet__1_.png" alt="Majeed KSA Tweet" />
This e-letter, meanwhile, has been on the case <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2014/05/14/the-de-dollarization-summit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">since the spring of 2014</a> &mdash; when Russian and Chinese ministers used the word &ldquo;de-dollarization&rdquo; to describe the topic of a meeting they&rsquo;d convened. Later that year, the two countries struck a natural gas deal that by most accounts was priced in rubles and yuan, not dollars.
For its part, the BRICS group has expanded considerably since its inception in 2009: new members include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
With over 20 aspiring members waiting to join &mdash; including major economies like Indonesia, Turkey and Nigeria &mdash; the bloc's economic and geopolitical influence continues to grow.
At the same time, the BRICS currency is progressing rapidly&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;The BRICS currency is very far along in establishing itself as a viable payment currency,&rdquo; Jim says. First, there is a distinction between a payment currency and a reserve currency&hellip;
&ldquo;A payment currency is the accounting unit to pay for imports and exports; it&rsquo;s really just a way of keeping score,&rdquo; Jim continues. &ldquo;Periodically, trading partners settle the score with a transfer of assets that can include commodities, dollars, euros or gold.
&ldquo;The prerequisites are&hellip;
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;An agreed-upon value (which can be fixed to another currency or pegged to gold)</li>
<li>An agreed-upon issuer (the New Development Bank, created by BRICS in 2014 and based in Shanghai, may be suitable for this purpose)</li>
<li>Secure payment channels (high-speed, encrypted digital pipelines for authenticated message traffic)</li>
<li>And digital ledgers.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Moving from a payment currency to a reserve currency is more difficult&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Reserves are not actual currency deposits,&rdquo; Jim notes. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re securities, such as U.S. Treasury notes or German government notes (bunds), controlled by the treasury or finance ministry of each country.
&ldquo;They are denominated in dollars or euros,&rdquo; Jim explains, &ldquo;but they are securities, not cash. The prerequisite here is a large liquid bond market, surrounded by extensive legal infrastructure.
&nbsp;&ldquo;It will take years to develop a BRICS-denominated bond market, although the process could be accelerated&hellip;
&ldquo;Members of the BRICS currency union could use surplus &lsquo;BRICS&rsquo; payment currency to buy gold bullion to hold in their reserves.
&ldquo;Russia, China and South Africa are all major gold producers and China has an extensive network of refineries so there should be ample gold available for purchase,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;When needed for purchases or settlements, the gold could be easily sold for BRICS currency.
&ldquo;So there is a short path to making &lsquo;BRICS&rsquo; a viable reserve currency: gold&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />But what does it mean for the dollar to lose its &ldquo;reserve currency&rdquo; status? 
Historically, the Dutch guilder, French franc and British pound each took their turn as the world's reserve currency, mirroring the rise and fall of these countries&rsquo; global influence.
The British pound&rsquo;s reign as the reserve currency, for instance, coincided with the height of the British Empire which, at its peak in the early 20th century, controlled an impressive quarter of the Earth&rsquo;s land surface.
However, the pound's dominance began to wane following World War I in 1914, Jim likes to remind us. This decline continued for about three decades, culminating in the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, effectively marking the end of the pound&rsquo;s status as the primary global reserve currency.
The dollar&rsquo;s loss of reserve currency status will advance likewise: It&rsquo;s a process, not an event.
Jim&rsquo;s takeaway? &ldquo;The BRICS currency is coming soon in the role of payment currency. It will not signal the immediate end of the dollar, but it will mean the dollar will have a reduced role in total global payments.
&ldquo;It will take longer for the BRIC to become a reserve currency, although a linkage to gold could accelerate that process,&rdquo; he says.
Without a doubt, the rise of a new BRICS currency could reshape the global monetary landscape and challenge the U.S. dollar's long-standing dominance.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Is Powell a Genius?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Inflation is moving closer to 3% than to the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s preferred 2% target. This morning, the Commerce Department issued its read on &ldquo;core PCE&rdquo; which strips out &ldquo;volatile&rdquo; food and gasoline prices.
By this yardstick, consumer prices rose 0.1% in August &mdash; below the 0.2% economists expected. Meanwhile, the year-over-year inflation rate ticked up to 2.7% (moving in the wrong direction, but in line with expectations).&nbsp;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4s3Px5hQXsDnTvFh75VcYO/1e209353bf8ea0f7d2247294d5d91e0c/pce_price_indexes.png" alt="PCE Price Index Chart" />
Is Fed Chair Jerome Powell a genius? Some mainstream financial outlets think so. &ldquo;Policymakers were on the right track with the recent interest-rate cuts,&rdquo; Barron&rsquo;s affirms.
And Quincy Krosby of LPL Financial tells Reuters: &ldquo;The core year-over-year at 2.7% suggests that another round of 50 basis points needs to come under careful scrutiny unless the labor market suggests weakness.&rdquo;
How&rsquo;s the market responding to the inflation news? Of the three major U.S. indexes, only the Dow is making positive strides &mdash; up almost 1% to 42,560. But the S&amp;P 500 is barely in the green at 5,745 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq is down about 0.30% to 18,130.
Commodities? Oil is up about 0.75% to $68.15 for a barrel of WTI. But precious gold and silver have plunged 1% and 1.25% respectively to $2,671.20 per ounce and $31.94.
Crypto, meanwhile, is in the green. Bitcoin&rsquo;s gained 1.65% to $66,120 and Ethereum&rsquo;s up 1.30% to $2,694.50.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The World&rsquo;s Largest Exporter Is Worried
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />This week, we've been reporting on an underreported potential strike as the International Longshoremen&rsquo;s Association is still at a standstill with the U.S. Maritime Alliance. The contract for 45,000 workers expires on Monday.
That said, U.S. ports aren&rsquo;t exactly world-class. &ldquo;In 2023 the Port of Los Angeles-Long Beach complex, largest in the U.S., only ranked ninth for volume among the world&rsquo;s container ports, and New York-New Jersey didn&rsquo;t crack the top 20.&rdquo;
Yes, it could create some snarls for holiday shoppers. On the other hand: &ldquo;China rightly has to worry about moving its stuff out as quickly as possible,&rdquo; says an article at FreightWaves.
&ldquo;The U.S. is the largest market for everything from cellphones to furniture to model trains made in China, the world&rsquo;s largest exporter.&rdquo;
And without automation &mdash; a key issue that&rsquo;s being thrashed out at the bargaining table &mdash; &ldquo;getting containers through those ports is like trying to push an elephant through a keyhole,&rdquo; the article adds.
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;But a union isn&rsquo;t a union without dues-paying members, so preserving jobs by keeping automation technology out of U.S. ports is always a high priority for ILA leadership even as, observers say, it compromises the efficiency of operations.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
So who else should be worried about a strike? &ldquo;Let consumers worry about it&hellip; They&rsquo;ll be the ones paying for disruptions, delays and other assorted supply-chain snarls that will be baked into the price of whatever shiny object hits store shelves.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Avoid the Self-Checkout Line
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Former Olympic athlete Meaggan Pettipiece's life was turned upside-down after a self-checkout mishap at an Indiana Walmart in March.
Despite the mother of four paying $176 for other items, Pettipiece&rsquo;s receipt showed she&rsquo;d failed to scan a ham and asparagus, valued at $67. Walmart security called the police, leading to Pettipiece's arrest for shoplifting.
During the arrest, officers found vapes and anti-nausea medication in her purse, resulting in additional charges of possession of cannabis and a controlled substance.
&ldquo;In the aftermath of the arrest, with a torrent of headlines sweeping across the state, Pettipiece resigned from her role as an NCAA Division 1 softball coach at Valparaiso University,&rdquo; The Independent reports.
&ldquo;However, it was later discovered that the machine did not register her ham and asparagus when she scanned them. Not only that, but the vapes did not contain nicotine or THC.
&ldquo;[Nor] did the anti-nausea pills belong to her,&rdquo; The Independent says. &ldquo;Instead, they belonged to an assistant coach, who reportedly asked the former All-American softball player to carry them for her during a softball game days before her arrest.&rdquo;
Good news? Last week, Indiana officials dropped all charges against Pettipiece after her lawyer filed for a dismissal earlier this month.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m happy, obviously,,&rdquo; Pettipiece says, but after a five-months long &ldquo;living nightmare,&rdquo; she says: &ldquo;I lost my career, I lost my job, the life I was building and it&rsquo;s been really difficult.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure of the future,&rdquo; she adds. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to figure out which direction I&rsquo;m going to go in.&rdquo;
We only hope that direction leads to a good lawyer&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: More Health Care Loose Ends
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/congress-cashes-in/#5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&ldquo;Why is there a shortage of doctors in the U.S.?&rdquo;</a> asks a reader discussing health care once again today. &ldquo;Dave, you responded with some good assumptions as to the cause&hellip; 
&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s one I&rsquo;m surprised you didn&rsquo;t include: We are a litigious society. My husband was a neurosurgeon. When he retired in 2003, malpractice insurance coverage, if he was sued during the statute of limitations following his retirement, was $60,000. I hate to think what the cost is now.
&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s another thing to consider: DEI policies practiced in medical schools afford some individuals an opportunity to enter medical school. But I&rsquo;d like to see the stats on what percentage of these students actually complete medical school and continue their education with specialty residencies.
&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the kicker: Out of nine countries, the United States spends more on medical care than any others, but is ranked dead last in the quality of care rendered.
&ldquo;The bottom line: If my husband were alive today and saw how medicine is practiced and the quality of care, he&rsquo;d die all over again.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;In early 2022, I had a heart attack,&rdquo; a second reader writes with his own health care assessment.
&ldquo;My cardiologist was in the same group that fired and sued Dr. Peter McCullough. When he released me, he told me to discontinue use of ivermectin and HCQ. I fired him and told him he should honor his Hippocratic Oath.
&ldquo;While I was in the hospital, I learned that nurses had completely lost the ability to draw blood. Every time they needed to draw blood, they stuck me, on average, five times.
&ldquo;In late 2023, I was diagnosed with the most aggressive type of prostate cancer. The tumor was removed, and I started chemotherapy. Three months later, I was scheduled to start proton radiation. During this time, I met with my proton radiation doctor. The first thing he asked was, &lsquo;Why are you taking ivermectin?&rsquo; I told him it was for COVID. His response was, &lsquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re one of those people.&rsquo;
&ldquo;My proton radiation doctor was supposed to have given me a full plan of treatment, but that did not happen. Before I started treatment, I asked him if he was treating my lymph nodes. He told me no, because it was impossible. After pushback he did the impossible and decided to treat my lymph nodes.
&ldquo;I was supposed to take 44 treatments, with a treatment every weekday. That should have required two months to complete. Due to lapses, lack of training and equipment failures it has been over six months, and I still require nine treatments.
&ldquo;The first two treatments I received did not count, because the proton radiation did not hit the markers. The markers are designed to absorb the proton radiation. Therefore, the first two treatments shot radiation into my body.
&ldquo;As bad as health care has become, it will get much worse as the WOKE continues to implement their DEI plans.&rdquo;
Emily: Dave said it yesterday: &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t do &lsquo;personal finance&rsquo; stuff around here.&rdquo; And I&rsquo;ll add today: We don&rsquo;t do personal health care stuff around here either.
Take care, reader, and enjoy your weekend!

anw-hero-img-09-27-24 brics countries currency and gold bars concept photo

shutterstock 2361411583

The BRICS leaders' summit in Kazan, Russia — scheduled for Oct. 22–24 — is expected to make a significant announcement regarding its BRICS’ currency plan.

BRICS Cements Dollar’s Demise

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />About That &ldquo;Solid&rdquo; Economic Data Today&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />There&rsquo;s nothing technically &ldquo;wrong&rdquo; with this headline&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7gQrX846ISOtXIrrsGfjVp/82b04d7866969c6dc7e7b3c0a54c9905/FMF-issue-09-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The S&amp;P 500 did rise to a record, the economic data is solid and tech stocks are rising. (Micron Technology issued a banger of a forecast for the rest of the year; shares are up 14% on the day.)
But the headline doesn&rsquo;t paint a complete picture.
Let&rsquo;s zero in on the day&rsquo;s economic data&hellip;
<ul>
<li>The Commerce Department issued its third and final guess on second-quarter GDP growth &mdash; an annualized 3.0%, in line with Wall Street&rsquo;s expectations</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>First-time unemployment claims for the week gone by totaled 218,000 &mdash; below Wall Street&rsquo;s expectations, indeed a four-month low</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Orders for durable goods &mdash; anything designed to last longer than three years &mdash; came in flat for August. That&rsquo;s a win compared with Wall Street&rsquo;s expectations for 2.7% drop.</li>
</ul>
So it&rsquo;s all good, right?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;My forecast of a coming recession has not changed,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s macroeconomics maven Jim Rickards.
&ldquo;We may be in one already. It&rsquo;s happening about as expected (maybe taking a bit longer to emerge) in line with the data.&rdquo;
After today, four more days remain in the current quarter. The &ldquo;GDPNow&rdquo; forecasting tool from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is projecting 2.9% annualized growth. A very &ldquo;solid&rdquo; figure.
But Jim is among a handful of economic renegades who see an anomaly: &ldquo;GDP is supposed to be a near-mirror image of GDI (gross domestic income),&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;but there&rsquo;s been a wide divergence in recent quarters. GDI is growing much more slowly and may soon be declining slightly.
&ldquo;In the past, when GDP and GDI diverge, GDI tends to be more accurate and GDP plunges quickly to re-converge with GDI.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> A similar anomaly shows up in the job numbers.
When the Labor Department reports the job numbers on the first Friday of the month, the headline number the media fixates on is the &ldquo;establishment survey&rdquo; &mdash; so called because it&rsquo;s a survey of business establishments, asking if they&rsquo;ve added or cut payroll.
But there&rsquo;s also a &ldquo;household survey&rdquo; &mdash; which as the name suggests, is a survey asking who in a household is working and who&rsquo;s not.
The two figures &ldquo;should be about the same, but the employer survey has held up well while the household survey has recently been declining,&rdquo; says Jim. &ldquo;Again, the household survey is the more accurate of the two when the measures diverge.
&ldquo;This means the employer survey (that&rsquo;s the one that gets all the headlines) may be set to fall and move in line with the household survey. That process may have started already based on the latest employment report released on Sept. 6 in which the employer and household data were roughly the same, but both were disappointing.&rdquo;
Yep, as we mentioned at the time, the wonks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics conjured a mere 142,000 new jobs for August. The July and June numbers were revised downward.
&ldquo;This shows,&rdquo; says Jim, &ldquo;that the weakness in the labor force actually began several months ago. Worse, &ldquo;more than 100% of new jobs were part-time (when full-time jobs are netted against part-time jobs).&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Jim&rsquo;s conclusion: &ldquo;Reliable data indicates a recession while &lsquo;headline&rsquo; data says all is well. This means that when the headline data converges, the correction could be swift and brutal and catch investors off-guard.
&ldquo;A nasty stock market correction (20&ndash;30% or more in one or two months) would be the last shoe to drop.
&ldquo;Real stock values are driven by factors that are much larger than stock fundamentals and interest rates. They&rsquo;re driven by inflation, deflation, currency fluctuations and business cycles. Investors need to be aware of these cross-currents in setting their portfolio allocations. Simply cheering on higher index levels isn&rsquo;t enough.
&ldquo;Gold is often a good hedge in such scenarios, but don&rsquo;t ignore Treasury notes.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Dockworker Strike Impact: Worse Than COVID?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />At least one CEO in the supply chain says it&rsquo;s too late to avert a dockworker strike come next Tuesday. The only question now is how long it lasts.
There&rsquo;s still no movement in the impasse between the International Longshoremen&rsquo;s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance. The current contract expires Monday. If there&rsquo;s no new deal, 45,000 workers at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports will walk.
Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su has been in contact with both sides &mdash; but unlike in the dispute at West Coast ports last year, she&rsquo;s not stepping in to mediate. The Biden administration says she&rsquo;ll negotiate only if asked by both sides to do so &mdash; and a few days ago, the union told the White House to back off.
Once a strike is underway, &ldquo;if it just lasts for a day or two, it&rsquo;s probably not a huge deal,&rdquo; says Ryan Petersen of the logistics firm Flexport.
&ldquo;If it lasts for more than a few days or more than a week, you're going to get massive cascading effects of backlog building up of cargo that needs to get moved and can't,&rdquo; he tells Yahoo Finance.
Indeed he says the impact in that case would be worse than the COVID shutdowns. &ldquo;In the COVID instance, those were caused by a huge increase in demand for goods. This is really different. This is a decrease in supply, much worse from an economic impact standpoint.&rdquo;
The biggest impact probably won&rsquo;t be with consumer goods for the holidays. What&rsquo;s most at risk appears to be auto parts, perishable foods and pharmaceuticals. Might want to call the doctor for a refill today, just in case&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />After a September to Remember&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;October marks a critical turning point for stocks,&rdquo; says Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner &mdash; looking ahead to the month that begins next Tuesday.
&ldquo;It concludes the worst six months of the year for U.S. equities, kicking off the best time of year to buy stocks&hellip;
&ldquo;October not only signals a significant shift in seasonal trends &mdash; it also has a knack for bottom-ticking the market, marking the low of 13 bear markets since World War II, per the Stock Trader&rsquo;s Almanac (most recently, the Dow ripped 14% in October 2022).&rdquo;
Of course, we&rsquo;re not in a bear market right now. Checking our screens, the S&amp;P 500 is in record territory this morning at 5,741.
&ldquo;Stock market bulls aren&rsquo;t searching for potential support zones,&rdquo; says Greg. &ldquo;Instead, they&rsquo;re exploring unchecked levels of overhead supply.
&ldquo;First-half leaders are making up lost ground following the late-summer selling session. Rotation is leading to broadening participation beneath the surface. And a new leadership group is emerging: small caps. These conditions would be better described as the second year of a bull run, as opposed to the end of an ugly downtrend.&rdquo;
What about the fact it&rsquo;s an election year? Going back to the first Eisenhower-Stevenson contest of 1952, average October returns during election years look like this: Dow -1%, S&amp;P 500 -0.9%, Nasdaq -2.2%.
All of which is interesting but not necessarily useful: &ldquo;Seasonality studies serve as a road map, not a definitive forecasting tool,&rdquo; says Greg. &rdquo;In fact, the most useful information comes when markets buck seasonal trends (like they&rsquo;re doing right now).&rdquo;
His guidance: &ldquo;Remain cautious&rdquo; &mdash; and give Mr. Market time to adjust to the start of a new cycle of interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. It&rsquo;s only the fourth time so far this century. Nothing dramatic, but &ldquo;stay alert for a little chop, and maybe a fake-out or two lower as we kick off Q4.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Elsewhere in the markets, the commodity complex is all over the place.
Crude has sunk another 2% today to $68.20. The pop over $72 two days ago had zero staying power. Next target? The $66 lows over earlier this month.
But that other economically sensitive commodity, copper, sits at three-month highs of $4.46 a pound. It&rsquo;s been a whale of a rebound off the sub-$4 lows in early August.
Precious metals, you ask? Gold is holding steady in record territory, the bid $2,664 at last check. Silver slipped after we went to virtual press yesterday, but now it&rsquo;s back within a dime of $32.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, has pushed past $65,000 for the first time since early August.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Trial Run?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Hmmm&hellip; 
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/55JkfkDxPYgBmR7koFgCHn/756cc16a0778301e2ae5491b2c2e6daa/FMF-issue-09-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked officials to begin discussing measures to limit the circulation of black market currency to curb illegal activity in Israel,&rdquo; says The Jerusalem Post.
&ldquo;Part of the proposal suggests limiting private ownership of large amounts of cash alternatives such as gold, silver and coins.&rdquo;
How large is &ldquo;large&rdquo;? We don&rsquo;t know.
Also under consideration is phasing out the 200-shekel note &mdash; barely $50 at current exchange rates. A separate article at Bitcoin Magazine cites the Hebrew-language newspaper Globes as saying &ldquo;most of the 200-shekel bills are not used for purchases, but for the accumulation of black capital.&rdquo;
&ldquo;In the medium term,&rdquo; says Israel&rsquo;s Ynet news site, &ldquo;the plan calls for a drastic reduction in cash use, aiming to eliminate cash transactions altogether within a few years, with payments to be made exclusively through bank transfers or credit cards.&rdquo;
Sounds as if Israel is looking to go the way of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-irs-expands-its-target-list#4">India</a> &mdash; a story we&rsquo;ve been following for eight years now.
But to the best of our knowledge, Indian leaders have never suggested limiting ownership of gold. It&rsquo;s too ingrained in the culture &mdash; given as gifts, frequently passed from one generation to the next.
We&rsquo;ll be keeping an eye on this one&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Property Taxes
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />It seems we stirred the property-tax pot anew yesterday. Let&rsquo;s get right to it&hellip; 
&ldquo;In my view,&rdquo; a reader writes, &ldquo;Texas property taxes are much akin to Kamala's stupid idea of a proposed tax on unrealized gains. My property values go up so my property tax goes up. Yet I have not realized any gain. It's an unrealized paper gain that I have to pay taxes on each year.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;I have an old maxim: &lsquo;For a given level of government, they have to extract the money in some way.&rsquo;
&ldquo;Without getting into the issue of overspending on dumb things by the government, the point is taxpayers expect a certain level of services - roads, schools, police etc. So if you cut out property taxes (or income taxes) the tax revenue must be made up somewhere else.
&ldquo;That is why states with no income tax typically have high sales taxes, property taxes or various use taxes. In Florida I pay a toll nearly every time I get on a freeway to go very far. So my question for North Dakota is where else will the tax revenue come from?
&ldquo;Enjoy the 5 even when I don't always agree.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Regarding the home-rich, cash-poor elderly (of which I am one&hellip;) &mdash; that&rsquo;s why reverse mortgages exist! 
&ldquo;Pay taxes and insurance and keep the place up and you&rsquo;re mostly all set! And the reverse mortgage holder takes the valuation crash risk. Oversimplified, but not enough people are taking advantage of this &lsquo;Swiss army knife.&rsquo;&rdquo;
Dave responds: We don&rsquo;t do &ldquo;personal finance&rdquo; stuff around here, but we understand reverse mortgages are a preferred strategy of the &ldquo;die broke&rdquo; crowd. Certainly they seem like a viable option if you&rsquo;re not looking to pass on wealth to the kids or grandkids&hellip;

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About that “solid” economic data today, there’s nothing “technically” wrong with it… 